Haptoglobin and Transferrin Variants in Bushmen and Some Other South African Peoples

Abstract

THE recent University of the Witwatersrand-Nuffield expedition to the Kalahari desert enabled one of us (J.S.W.) to collect blood samples from Naron Bushmen, living their traditional hunting life and from Bushmen employed on farms in the vicinity of Ghanzi, Bechuanaland. The blood-grouping results on these specimens have already been reported¹. In addition, two of us (R.S. and J.S.W.) were able to obtain samples from Hottentot (Nama-speaking) subjects in the Richtersveld area of Little Namaqualand and from Cape-coloured people in the Springbok and Steinkopf regions. Since the genetical variants of the serum proteins have not previously been studied in these peoples the sera were forwarded to London by Dr. A. Zoutendyk, who also kindly provided a series of Zulu sera, collected in Johannesburg, for comparison. The sera were examined by starch-gel electrophoresis using B.D.H. potato starch hydrolysed by the by the method of Smithies². The discontinuous buffer system described by Poulik³ was used in routine screening. After addition of hæmoglobin to saturate the hatoglobins the sera were inserted into a wide gel on pieces of filter-paper in batches of twelve. One half of the gel was stained with amidoschwartz and the other was treated with benzidine-hydrogen peroxide reagent. Specimens in which haptoglobins were weak or apparently absent were also run by the vertical method⁴ and this was also used to compare β-globulin variants the identity of which as iron-binding transferrins was checked with the nitroso-R reagent of Smithies⁵. The results are shown in Table 1.