Transferrin subtypes in Iran.

The frequency of transferrin Tf C subtypes has been determined by double one-dimensional electrophoresis of plasma samples from Moslems (n = 91), Zoroastrians (n = 97), Jews (n = 88) and Armenians (n = 88) of Iran. The Zoroastrians show the lowest frequency of TfC1 (0.4999) and highest frequencies of TfC2 and TfC3 (.02215, and 0.2783, respectively). The Jews have the highest TfC1- and the lowest TfC2- and TfC3 frequencies (0.8011, 0.1478, and 0.0512, respectively). It could be shown that the differences between Zoroastrians and Jews are highly significant (p less than 0.001). Arbitrary subtyping of transferrin Tf B and TfD phenotypes could be done on samples from three regional groups of Iran: North: n = 282, Central: n = 548, and South: n = 587 into Tf B (Iran 1, 2, 3 and 4) and Tf D (Iran 1, 2 and 3) was performed according to mobilities relative to the transferrin C protein during polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and by relative pI deviations from the Fe2-transferrin C1 protein after isoelectric focussing. The allele frequencies found in the total sample (n = 1417) are: TfB1 = 0.0003, TfB2 = 0.0010, TfB3 = 0.0042, TfB4 = 0.0007; TfD1 = 0.0017, TfD2 = 0.0014, and TfD3 = 0.0010.