Reliable and rapid characterization of functional FCN2 gene variants reveals diverse geographical patterns

We employed a real-time PCR based on Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) method to genotype four functional SNPs including -986？G？>？A (#rs3124952), -602？G？>？A (#rs3124953), -4A？>？G (#rs17514136) and +6424？G？>？T (#rs7851696) in the ficolin-2 (FCN2) gene. We characterized the FCN2 variants in individuals representing Brazilian (n？=？176), Nigerian (n？=？180), Vietnamese (n？=？172) and European Caucasian ethnicity (n？=？165).We observed that the genotype distribution of three functional SNP variants (？986？G？>？A, -602？G？>？A and -4A？>？G) differ significantly between the populations investigated (p？<？0.0001). The SNP variants were highly linked to each other and revealed significant population patterns. Also the distribution of haplotypes revealed distinct geographical patterns (p？<？0.0001).The observed distribution of the FCN2 functional SNP variants may likely contribute to altered serum ficolin levels and this may depend on the different disease settings in world populations. To conclude, the use of FRET based real-time PCR especially for FCN2 gene will benefit a larger scientific community who extensively depend on rapid, reliable method for FCN2 genotyping.