Allele frequencies of four VNTR loci in the Chinese population in Hong Kong.

DNA specimens isolated from the blood samples of 209 unrelated Chinese persons were characterised with four probes, i.e. MS1 (D1S7), YNH24 (D2S44), pH30 (D4S139) and TBQ7 (D10S28), in conjunction with the restriction enzyme HaeIII to establish a population DNA-profile database. Each locus showed a fairly wide distribution of alleles and high heterozygosity. The sizes of alleles ranged between 0.73 and 19.95 kb for the D1S7 locus, between 0.78 and 4.72 kb for the D2S44 locus, between 2.53 and 15.74 kb for the D4S139 locus, and between 0.66 and 6.53 kb for the D10S28 locus. The heterozygosities for the D1S7, D2S44, D4S139 and D10S28 loci were 97.6%, 92.3%, 86.6% and 96.2%, respectively. Allele frequencies were determined using the "fixed-bin' approach. The bins were based on the 30-band pattern of the molecular size marker used in this laboratory (GIBCO BRL 4401SA). The most commonly observed bin frequencies for the four loci ranged from 9% to 19%. When a default minimum bin frequency of 10% and the product rule based upon the principles of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium were used to calculate the most common genotype frequencies, the values ranged from 2.1% to 6.4%. The minimum composite discriminating potential of the four loci, expressed as the product of the frequency of the most common genotype for each locus, was about 1 in 770,000.