Discriminating between allelic and interlocus differences among human immunoglobulin V_H4 sequences by analyzing single spermatozoa

Abstract

To address the challenging issue of distinguishing allelic and interlocus differences among repetitive sequences, human immunoglobulin V_H4 loci in the parental haplotypes of 13 donors were determined by analyzing single spermatozoa. V_H4 sequences detected among these donors were assigned to their corresponding loci based on the fact that allelic sequences usually segregate into different gametes. Four out of the ten V_H4 loci were shown to contain null alleles that are undetectable with diploid materials. The distribution of the allelic variation within the analyzed regions at the V_H4 loci is highly biased.