INCLUSION OF SEROLOGICAL HLA TYPING RESULTS IN VIRTUAL DNA ANALYSIS BY DYNAMIC RETRANSLATION.
W. Helmberg°, G. Lanzer°, R. Zahn⁺, B. Weinmayr°, T. Wagner°, E. Albert⁺, °Transfusion-medicine, Universityclinics, Graz, Austria ⁺Laboratory for Immunogenetics, LMU Munich, Germany.


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The data format of Virtual DNA Analysis allows the storage of HLA genotyping results in the form of single sequence motives.   As e. g. in bone marrow registtries still a large amount of serological HLA data is available, these data have to be included in a database based on sequence information in order not to loose this HLA information.The retranslation of a serologic detectable HLA type to the respective cDNA is strictly dependent on the described list of alleles sharing this epitope. Based on this information we have retranslated the different serological epitopes to the cDNA information which at least has to be present in the sample. As more than the currently published alleles might share the same epitope, this retranslation and therefore the derived cDNA have to be of a dynamic nature. The cDNA information can be handled like an SSO and thus can be combined with other genotyping results. Reanalysing this cDNA information, at least the alleles with the described epitope specificity are listed as matching alleles. Depending on the distribution of polymorphic sites, newly listed alleles of the same main group without assigned serological specificity can share the same common cDNA. It is up to the clinician to decide whether this serologically not specified alleles have to be taken into account or not. The described method of dynamic retranslation is one possibility to achieve a link between serology and genotyping, but the fact has to be taken into account, that the used data are only of preliminary nature and have to be a subject to change in the light of updated serologic allele specificities.