No abstract

A 38-year-old Russian woman (KZ) has been identified as the fourth proposita with the Inab blood group phenotype. Like the first two propositi, she has a chronic intestinal disorder and, as shown for the third proposita, her Inab phenotype is demonstrably inherited. KZ's serum contained anti-IFC, which reacted with a red blood cell (RBC) membrane component with an Mr of 70,000, which is decay accelerating factor (DAF). Her RBCs lacked all Cromer-related blood group antigens and DAF. Her RBCs were no more susceptible than normal control RBCs to lysis in acid lysis or in rabbit or human antibody-initiated complement lysis tests. Northern blots of total RNA isolated from KZ's Epstein- Barr virus-transformed lymphoblasts showed a marked reduction of DAF mRNA when compared with normal. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of cDNA confirmed this reduced level of DAF mRNA. Sequencing of the PCR product showed a 44-nucleotide deletion in the mRNA close to the short consensus repeats IIIa/IIIb intron/exon boundary. This deletion results in a change in the reading frame that places a termination codon six amino acids after the deletion. The putative translation product would lack a glycosyl phosphatidyl- inositol linkage site and, therefore, would not be membrane-bound in the RBC.

In contrast to the data published by Payne and Huntsman in 1982, no association between GLO I and Hp phenotypes could be found in a sample of 973 unrelated Austrians.

No abstract

A further case of blood chimerism in male twins concerning red and white cells is described. The erythrocyte chimerism could be detected by 5 out of 16 genetic marker systems and the lymphocyte chimerism by the analysis of autosomal polymorphisms of peripheral blood lymphocytes.