PCR Typing of the COL2A1 System: Allelic Frequencies in Two Population Samples from North and Central Italy

The COL2A1 system is a VNTR in the 3′- flanking region of the human Type II collagen gene. It was first sequenced by Stoker et al. (1985), who pointed out the polymorphism was due to repetitive sequences of 31 or 34 bp. Mendelian inheritance and polymorphism were investigated at the same time with the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique by Wu et al. (1990) and Priestley et al. (1990). Using different primers these authors found four and five alleles respectively.