Killer Cell Immunoglobulin-Like Receptors (KIR) Typing by DNA Sequencing

DNA sequencing is a powerful technique for identifying allelic variation within the natural killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptor genes. Because of the relatively large size of the KIR genes, each locus is amplified in two or more overlapping segments. Sanger sequencing of each gene from a preparation containing one or two alleles yields a sequence that is used to identify the alleles by comparison with a reference database.