Identification of a novel HLA-B allele HLA-B*4059 in Chinese bone marrow donors†

A novel human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I allele, B*4059, has been identified in routine typing of bone marrow donors for the Chinese Marrow Donor Registry in Beijing, China. The B*4059 allele differs from the closest matching allele B*4030 by six nucleotide substitutions in exon 3: nt 361 (G→A), 362 (T→A), resulting in an amino acid change from V(GTG) to R(AGG) at codon 121; nt 380 (G→C), resulting in an amino acid change fromV(GTG) to L(CTG) at codon 127; nt 388 (G→C), resulting in no amino acid change; nt 413 (A→G), resulting in an amino acid change from K(AAC)→D(GAC); nt 420 (A→C), resulting in an amino acid change from Y(TAC)→S(TCC). Four amino acid changes implicates a different specificity and affinity of antigen binding.

The name B*4059 has been officially assigned by the WHO Nomenclature Committee in June 2005. This follows the agreed policy that, subject to the conditions stated in the most recent Nomenclature Report ( 1), names will be assigned to new sequences as they are identified. Lists of such new names will be published in the following WHO Nomenclature Report. The nucleotide sequence reported in this paper has been submitted to the GenBank and was assigned the accession number AY961619.