HLA-DRB1*12:02 allele promiscuity level and extracellular pathogen diversity in Southeast Asia.

(A) HLA-DRB1*12:02 has an exceptionally high promiscuity level compared with other alleles. The figure shows alleles with at least 10% frequency in at least one population in Southeast Asia. Predicted allele promiscuity values are shown. (B) The mean frequency of DRB1*12:02 increases with extracellular pathogen diversity across population groups (Spearman’s rho: 0.57, P = 0.017). Populations that resided in China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines were included in the analysis. Red curve indicates smooth curve fitted using cubic smoothing spline method in R (see Methods). The underlying data for this figure can be found in S4 Data.