[Establishment of a PCR-SSP method for the simultaneous amplification and identification of the presence of KIR genes].

Objective: To develop a polymerase chain reaction-sequence specific primer (PCR-SSP) method for simultaneous amplification and identification of the KIR genes among Chinese population.

Methods: Peripheral blood samples from 132 healthy donors who had given blood at Shenzhen Blood Center from January 2015 to November 2015 were selected as the study subjects. Based on the polymorphism and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) information of high-resolution KIR alleles in the Chinese population and the IPD-KIR database, specific primers were designed to amplify all the 16 KIR genes and the 2DS4-Normal and 2DS4-Deleted subtypes. The specificity of each pair of PCR primers was verified by using samples with known KIR genotypes. During PCR amplification of the KIR gene, co-amplification the fragment of human growth hormone (HGH) gene by multiplex PCR was used as the internal control to prevent false negative results. A total of 132 samples with known KIR genotypes were randomly selected for blind inspection to verify the reliability of the developed method.

Results: The designed primers can specifically amplify the corresponding KIR genes, with clear and bright bands for the internal control and KIR genes. The results of detection are fully consistent with the known results.

Conclusion: The KIR PCR-SSP method established in this study can yield accurate results for the identification of the presence of KIR genes.