ALLELE NAME TRANSLATION TOOL
Version 0.5.0

Toward this end, we have developed the Allele Name Translation Tool (ANTT), which will translate non-colon-delimited HLA allele names (e.g., A*01010101) to their colon-delimited counterparts (e.g., A*01:01:01:01), and will update allele names that have changed as the result of a nomenclature change (i.e., DPB1*0502 will be translated to DPB1*104:01, and HLA-C allele prefixes will be changed from Cw* to C*). In addition the ANTT can be used to translate between any pair of allele naming conventions through the use of customized translation tables.

In addition to translating whole allele names, the ANTT can translate allele-names that have been truncated to two, four, or six digits (e.g., A*01, A*0101, or A*010101) to their colon-delimited counterparts truncated to the appropriate number of polymorphic domains (e.g., A*01, A*01:01, or A*01:01:01), and can translate each of the alleles in an ambiguous allele string (i.e., A*01010101/A*01010102N/A*010102 will be translated to A*01:01:01:01/A*01:01:01:02N/A*01:01:02).

Finally, the ANTT can translate allele names that include locus prefixes (e.g., A*01010101) as well as allele names that do not include locus prefixes (e.g., 01010101). For details about installing and using the ANTT, read The ANTT User Guide.

ANTT v0.5.0 includes bug fixes and improvements to the previous release (v0.4.8), as well as new options for specifying the information recorded in the log files for each translation. See the the ANTT User Guide for details.

The ANTT uses translation tables derived from the translation source table available at http://hla.alleles.org/data/txt/Nomenclature_2009.txt; this file can also be obtained via FTP from ftp://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/databases/imgt/mhc/hla/. ANTT translation tables can be generated from a translation source file using the ANTT File Manager (distributed with the ANTT).

In addition, custom translation tables and associated configuration files are now distributed with the ANTT v0.5.0 package. These are:

• Complete truncation tables that include all left-truncated allele names (e.g., A*01010101 is truncated to A*01, A*0101 and A*010101, and A*01:01:01:01 is truncated to A*01, A*01:01 and A*01:01:01).
• Antigen recognition sequence (ARS) expansion tables that translate ARS-identical "g-codes" (e.g., A*0101g) to full-length allele name strings (e.g., A*01010101/01010102N/0104N/0122N/0132/0134N/0137).

ANTT users are encouraged to join the ANTT User Mailing List for news and notifications about the tool. (If you click this link to send an email, be sure to delete the "_NO_SPAM" from the end of the email address.) Your contact information will be used only for ANTT-related news, and will not be shared.

System Requirements
The ANTT runs in the Microsoft .NET framework (version 3.5 SP1) in Windows XP and Vista, should run natively in Windows 7, and can be run on Apple OSX, BSD, and Linux platforms using the Mono open source .NET development framework (version 2.4).