Unidad de Inmunología, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain.
CD1 is a family of proteins structurally related to major histocompatibility complex (MHC) molecules and specialized in presenting lipids or glycolipids to T cells. In humans, there are five CD1 genes (CD1A to CD1E). It has been shown that, in contrast with classical MHC genes, CD1 loci display a very limited polymorphism. In the present work we describe two novel CD1E alleles found in two healthy Caucasian individuals. One allele differs from the wild-type by a point mutation resulting in a replacement of arginine at position 154 by a tryptophan. In the second allele we found a substitution of the leucine 184 by a proline.