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Distribution of HLA Alleles and Haplotypes in Tamil-Speaking South Indian Populations: Affinities with Spanish and Austronesian

  • HUMAN GENETICS
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Abstract

The present study was aimed to study HLA-DRB1, -DQB1 alleles and haplotypes of two endogamous groups of South India. PCR-SSP typing of HLA-DRB1, -DQB1 alleles were performed on 63 Mukkuvar, primarily a coastal population and 101 Valayar, a population primarily living on the fringes of forest areas. Genetic distances, neighbor-joining dendrograms and correspondence analysis have been performed. The HLA class II alleles, DRB1*07 (32.5%), DRB1*15 (23.0%), DRB1*13 (11.1%) and DRB1*12 (10.3%) were more frequent among Mukkuvar. Among Valayar, DRB1*12 (18.8%), DRB1*15 (17.3%), DRB1*04 (15.4%), DRB1*07 (13.4%) and DRB1*10 (10.9%) were more frequent. Similarly, DQB1*06 (38.1%), DQB1*02 (26.2%) and DQB1*05 (20.5%) alleles among Mukkuvar and DQB1*06 (40.2%) and DQB1*05 (28.9%) among Valayar were more frequent. We genotyped the two most common South Indian two-locus haplotypes, such as DRB1*15-DQB1*06 and DRB1*07-DQB1*02 for HLA-A, -B and -C alleles to identify the 5-locus extended haplotypes. We identified the presence of a highly unique extended haplotype A*03-B*35-C*12-DRB1*07-DQB1*02 in Valayar (HF: 0.2777) and Mukkuvar (HF: 0.1666) hitherto not reported in any of the world populations. The HLA-DRB1 allele based phylogenetic analysis have demonstrated the unique and distinct phylogenetic relatedness of Mukkuvar and Valayar with other ethnic populations. The coastal population Mukkuvar is more closely related to Hispanic and Guanche populations. However, the Valayar revealed phylogenetic relatedness with Austronesian and Micronesian populations supporting the theory of coastal migrations of Out-of-Africa ancestral founding populations.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank all blood donors for their voluntary support. We also acknowledge Mrs. Sheeba Nancy, Research Scholar, Mother Teresa Women’s University for statistical support. We extend our gratitude to the authorities of the Scott Christian College, Nagercoil for population sampling during the period 2015–2016.

Funding

This work was supported by the UGC, Government of India through ‘Research Fellowship in Science’ for the Meritorious Students Scheme (R. Kamaraj/F. No. 25-1/2014-15 (BSR)/5-67/2007) and Tissue Typing Services, Madurai Kamaraj University (Prof. K. Balakrishnan).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Immunology, School of Biological Sciences, Madurai Kamaraj University, 625021, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India

    R. Kamaraj, K. Balakrishnan, M. Dhivakar & C. Rathika

  2. Department of Zoology, Scott Christian College, 629001, Nagercoil, Tamil Nadu, India

    C. Albert & P. Justinkumar

  3. Department of Zoology, The American College, 625002, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India

    K. Navaneethakannan

Authors
  1. R. Kamaraj
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  2. K. Balakrishnan
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  3. M. Dhivakar
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  4. C. Rathika
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  5. C. Albert
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  6. P. Justinkumar
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  7. K. Navaneethakannan
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Contributions

Author contributions are as follows.

Study design: Kamaraj; Sampling: Kamaraj, Balakrishnan, Dhivakar, Albert, Justin, Navaneetha Kannan; Data Collection: Kamaraj, Dhivakar, Rathika; Data Analysis: Kamaraj; Manuscript Preparation: Kamaraj, Balakrishnan.

ORCID

Kamaraj Raju https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5724-0780.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to K. Balakrishnan.

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COMPLIANCE WITH ETHICAL STANDARDS

Conflict of interest. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Statement of compliance with standards of research involving humans as subjects. All procedures performed in the study are consistent with the ethical standards of the institutional ethics committee. Institutional ethical clearance was obtained from Madurai Kamaraj University (Ethical and Review Board Committee).

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Kamaraj, R., Balakrishnan, K., Dhivakar, M. et al. Distribution of HLA Alleles and Haplotypes in Tamil-Speaking South Indian Populations: Affinities with Spanish and Austronesian. Russ J Genet 56, 1139–1150 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1022795420090100

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