DNA typing with digoxigenin-11-dideoxyuridinetriphosphate-labelled oligonucleotide probes enables non-radioactive analysis using a dual detection system: application for screening HLA-DQA1 polymorphisms.

We describe a standardized, highly sensitive, nonradioactive detection procedure for HLA class-II typing of DQA1 alleles and suballeles which has important and cost-effective application in studying HLA disease associations. The procedure involves polymerase chain reaction-based target DNA sequence amplification and dot blotting followed by stringent hybridization with digoxigenin-11-dideoxyuridine triphosphate 3'-end-labelled allele-specific oligonucleotide probes. The dual detection system described here makes this procedure very versatile.