Phosphoglucomutase polymorphism detected by isoelectric focusing: gene frequencies, evolution and linkage.

Four alleles at the phosphoglucomutase (PGM1) locus in man have been recently demonstrated by isoelectric focusing, and in this study gene frequencies have been estimated for four populations, and significant differences have been indicated between the results. Pedigree analysis of the PGM1 and rhesus loci confirm a weak linkage in males, but none in females. An examination of PGM1 phenotypes in a range of primates shows that a proportion possess a band focusing at the same isoelectric point as human PGM1+1. We propose that all the human and primate alleles may have evolved from a common ancestral PGM1+1 locus.