Placental Enzyme Polymorphisms in Canadian Populations

Phenotype distributions and allele frequencies of phosphoglucomatase loci PGM1, PGM2, and PGM3 were determined for four Canadian populations: SWO-Random, a randomly chosen group from southwestern Ontario; SWO-Caucasian, selected from SWO; Indian and Eskimo from the James and Hudson area. In the two population samples from southwestern Ontario, allele frequencies were similar to those of European populations but there was a marked excess of homozygotes at the PGM1 locus. In Indians the PGM1 1 allele had a frequency of 0.922, that of the PGM1 3 allele was 0.765.The allele frequencies for the Eskimo population were 0.848 for PGM1 1 AND 0.884 FOR PGM1 3. One rare phenotype was found at each of the PGM1 AND PGM2 loci.