KEARNS — Manny Condas discovered something unusual about the blood types of his family members while conducting his science fair project, and the results were of interest to the National Institute of Health (NIH). Condas, a seventh-grader at Saint Francis Xavier Catholic School, came up with the idea for his project by visiting his mother at the Intermountain Medical Center Transfusion Service, where she works. "She showed me how she tested people’s blood to find out what type they were for a transfusion, and I liked what she was doing," said Manny. "I thought a good science fair project would be to see if I could predict my sister’s and my blood type based on the blood types of my parents. Since most people know the types A, B, O, Rh blood group system, my mom suggested I test for the Kidd blood group system," which is a rarer group. Because all four members of the Condas family are type O and are Rh negative, they wanted to test for a less common blood group, said Becky Condas, Manny’s mother. "I picked a different blood group system from the many systems because I thought that would give some variety to the project." Blood groups are characterized by the different antigens in the blood cells, Becky added. "Antigens are proteins or carbohydrates that are attached to the red blood cells. For instance, people in the A blood group system have A antigens and group B have B antigens." The Condas family had their blood drawn by a finger stick. "The Kidd group antigens are JKA and JKB," said Manny. "My mom was JKA positive and JKB negative and my dad was JKA negative and JKB positive. I predicted that my sister and I would be JKA positive and JKB positive because we would inherit the JKA positive from my mother and the JKB positive from my father." Manny used the Punnett Square chart that is used to predict offspring genes. "I was JKA positive and JKB positive," said Manny. "But my sister, Maggie, was JKA positive and JKB negative." "This was a surprising result because Maggie should have inherited the JKB positive gene from my husband," said Becky. "The question is, where is the Kidd B gene she was supposed to inherit from her dad? The rare null gene, JK, is the silent Kidd gene. It’s so rare we didn’t consider that it could be passed on. So we retested our blood four times, and the results were the same." "One explanation for this result is that my dad has a Kidd JKB gene and a silent Kidd B gene and he passed the silent one to Maggie," said Manny. "The silent Kidd gene has not been found in the Caucasian population; it’s most commonly found in the Polynesian populations, but even in the Polynesian population it’s considered exceedingly rare," said Becky. Becky discussed the unusual finding with the medical director of her laboratory. An Internet search for articles about the silent Kidd gene revealed an article by an author who works at the NIH in Maryland. "We contacted them and they said this was the kind of thing they are interested in studying," said Becky. "We collected our blood samples again and sent them to NIH a couple weeks ago. A researcher will study these results in the summer."
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