Tissue typing of a Guardian journalist and his wife at Anthony Nolan’s Histocompatibility Laboratories have identified a new allele sequence.
The tests on columnist Tim Dowling and his wife were carried out as part of a feature on a new book by Daniel M Davis, The Compatibility Gene, which suggests that we unconsciously select the perfect partner by sniffing out their ‘compatibility genes.’
After providing spit samples for analysis, Tim Dowling and his wife were talked through the results of their tissue typing by Professor Steven Marsh, Deputy Director of Research at Anthony Nolan. While Tim was found to possess the 39th most common haplotype among European Caucasians, alongside the 125th, his wife’s results revealed much rarer haplotypes. In fact one of her alleles was a type that has never been seen before.
Professor Marsh explained that this will now be properly sequenced, given an official number and added to the IMGT/HLA Database.
‘This is an incredibly exciting development which has happened purely by chance.’
Read more about Anthony Nolan’s in-depth analysis at The Guardian website.