POSTER NO: 571

Alphoid heteroduplex polymorphism in sample populations of Romania

Luis O. Popa, Ionela Moanta, Florina Raicu, Danut Cimponeriu, Pompilia Apostol, Gabriela Bordeianu, Lucian Gavrila
Institute of Genetics, University of Bucharest, Aleea Portocalilor Nr. 1-3, Sector 6, Bucharest, Romania

The alphoid heteroduplex (ah) polymorphism is a single PCR assay able to detect variants in the alphoid region of the human Y chromosome. The differences between these variants consist in a 4bp insertion/deletion located in the edges of the alphoid array that make up the centromere of the human Y chromosome and several point mutations. Previous studies (Santos et all, 1999) identified 53 heteroduplex haplotypes, haplotypes ahII and ahIII being the most frequent between Caucasians. The present study documents this polymorphism for the first time in the Romanian population, complementing some previous studies (Novelletto et all., 2000) on the bialelic Hind III+/Hind III- polymorphism in the alphoid region of the Y chromosome.