Chinese hospital finds new genetic sequence for rare blood type p during routine tests
- China has only about a dozen documented cases of people with type p blood, a variety that has a frequency lower than one in a million
- US-based GenBank sequence database says nucleotide sequence present in sample has been never seen before
There are only about a dozen documented cases of people in China with type p blood, a variety that has a frequency lower than one in a million, according to the report.
It said staff at the Taixing People’s Hospital submitted the genetic sequence to the GenBank sequence database, an open access collection maintained by the National Centre for Biotechnology Information in the United States.
In December, the US centre said the nucleotide sequence present in the sample had not been detected previously anywhere in the world. Nucleotides are one of many small molecules that form DNA and RNA, nucleic acids that carry genetic information.
The sequence has been assigned the serial number OR900206 in the human gene database.
The P blood group was discovered in 1927, and samples can be categorised into five subtypes, depending on the antigens on the surfaces of its red blood cells.
