Organization, sequence and expression of the HLA-B27 gene: a molecular approach to analyze HLA and disease associations

EH Weiss, W Kuon, C Dörner, M Lang, G Riethmüller - Immunobiology, 1985 - Elsevier
Among the numerous autoimmune diseases associated with various HLA alleles, the one
with the highest relative risk so far reported has been ankylosing spondylitis with HLA-
B27To examine this relationship more directly, we have cloned the gene encoding the HLA-
B27 antigen and determined its complete DNA sequenceComparison of the HLA-B27
sequence with that of the allelic HLA-B7 shows a high level of homologyMutations are
distributed evenly between exons and intronsExon 1 and intron 1 are the most divergent …