HLA Alleles
Polymorphism Heat Maps
We have generated heat maps of the polymorphic postitions in the amino acid sequences for some of the main HLA genes. These maps look at the amino acids seen at each position and graphically display the levels of polymorphisms seen. The analysis does not include the sequence of null alleles. The heat maps are generated using release 3.2.0 of the IPD-IMGT/HLA Database, and will be updated periodically.
About the Heat Maps
We are currently providing three types of heat map. The first type of heat map displays the polymorphic positions on a column chart with the base level of the X-axis set to 1 to represent the monomorphic positions. These charts simply show the number of different amino acids found at a particular position.
The second type of heat map supplements the column chart with a 100% stacked column graphic. In the these figures there are two graphs with the top section represented by the column chart and beneath this is the 100% stacked column chart. The second chart details the percentages of each amino acid found at each position. Monomorphic positions will be represented by a solid light blue bar and polymorphic positions by a number of coloured bars.
The last type of heat map displays the amino acids found at each position. This figure displays a consensus sequence with the polymorphic positions stacked in columns above the consensus base. These columns are ordered with the most frequent amino acids at the base of the column. Amino acids that only appear at this position once are shown in lower case text.
Examples of the three types of heat map can be seen below.
Access the Heat Maps below - clicking on the small image will open a new window with a full size version.
| Type 1: Heat Map | Type 2: Heat Map of Alpha 1 & 2 Domain | Type 2: Heat Map of Alpha 3 Domain | Type 3: Heat Map | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HLA-A |  |
 |
 |
 |
| HLA-B |  |
 |
 |
 |
| HLA-C |  |
 |
 |
 |
| Type 1: Heat Map | Type 2: Heat Map of Beta 1 Domain | Type 3: Heat Map | ||
| HLA-DRB1 |  |
 |
 |
