The 39th In Silico Megabank Research Seminar will be held on Friday, November 15. This Time, we will be welcoming Dr. Jun Ohashi, University of Tsukuba as our lecturer, and he will be speaking on “The specificity of the HLA gene region and HLA-related analysis”.

・Date/Time: November 15(Fri.) 17:00‐18:30
・Venue: Conference Room 1(2nd Floor), Tohoku Medical Megabank Organization
・Title: The specificity of the HLA gene region and HLA-related analysis
・Lecturer: Jun Ohashi（University of Tsukuba）

＊This lecture is transferable as a class in the medical research-related lecture course.

・Abstract: The major function of HLA (Human Leukocyte Antigen) is to present autologus and non-autologus antigen (pathogen) to T cells. Classical HLA molecules have class I molecules and class II molecules, and the HLA gene cluster encoding those HLA molecules is located in short arm region, 6p21.3, of the sixth chromosome.  Characteristics of the HLA gene region include the presentation of the most sophisticated polymorphism in human genome, actual observation of high in linkage disequilibrium for several Mbs, difference in the number of genes by Haplotypes, and existence of polymorphism related to sensitivity toward disorders. In this presentation, the roles of natural selection, which is the key to understand the linkage disequilibrium of HLA gene region, is explained using an example of recent action of positive selection on DPB1*04:01 allyl in Japanese group. Also, we would like to introduce HLA gene-related studies on patients with Plasmodium Falciparum Malaria.

・Organizer: Gen Tamiya, Masao Nagasaki

Access : http://www.megabank.tohoku.ac.jp/english/info/access.html