Characterization of Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms in 13 Members of the ABC Drug Transporter Genes in Three Different Populations

To evaluate the usefulness of the two public databases, HapMap and Perlegen, in facilitating studies associating polymorphisms in these genes with drug response, we examined 111 single-nucleotide-polymorphisms from 13 ABCtransporter genes in Singaporean-Chinese, European-Americans and African-Americans. We found that genotype data from the HapMap/Perlegen databases are generally transferable to different sampling of the same population and to similar populations residing elsewhere. However, not all ABC-transporter family genes are amenable to SNP-tagging due to the low tagging-efficiency of low-LD genes resulting in negligible cost-savings. Hence, alternative approaches may have to be explored for low-LD ABC genes.