[Detection of rare beta globin gene mutations in north western Iran]

ABSTRACT

Recent molecular studies on Iranian -thalassemia genes revealed the presence of eight common mutations associated with beta-thalassemia. Although these mutations are frequent, there are other rare and unknown mutations that can create large problems in designing preventive programs. We detected and explained the common mutations in north-western Iran previously and detection of the rare and unknown mutations could be useful in diagnosis and design of future preventive programs. In this study. 5ml peripheral blood from 20 Azari- beta-thalassemia patients whose mutation was not revealed in the previous study was collected and DNA extraction was done by isopropanol and proteinase k method. initially, samples were examined for the rare mutations Codon6, Codon16, Codon4l/42, Codon36/37, - 88 and Codon22 by ARMS - PCR techniques and then the unknown cases were directly sequenced. According to our results, Codon15[TGG-TGA], Codon16[-C], Codon36/37[-T], lVSII-848[C-A], IVSII-745[C-G], -28[A-C] and Codon25/26[+T] were recognized and added to the spectrom of beta globin gene mutations in Azerbaijan and Iran. Also, we detected four SNP sites 5'UTR+20[C-T], Codon2 [CAC-CAT] IVSII-16[C-G] and IVSII-666[T-C] in beta-thalassemia genes. Our results could be useful for developing molecular screening plans and help prenatal diagnosis of beta thalassemia in Azerbaijan, Iran and other neighboring countries