"While the individual man is an unsolvable puzzle, in the aggregate, he becomes a mathematical certainty". Sherlock Holmes. The main purpose of the allelefrequencies.net web site is to provide one central source, freely available to all, for the storage of allele frequencies from different polymorphic areas in the HUMAN genome. Users can contribute the results of their work into one common database, and can perform database searches on information already available. The success of this website will depend on you to contribute your data. All suggestions for the website - changes, expansion, whatever, are very welcome. Please look at INSTRUCTION boxes on each section.As well as providing assistance they indicate how data should be entered. This is needed for UNIFORMITY. IT IS IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER THAT THE LIMITATION OF THIS WEBSITE IS THE AVAILABILITY OF DATA.IF ONE SEARCHES TO ASCERTAIN WHICH POPULATIONS HAVE A CERTAIN ALLELE,ONE CANNOT CONCLUDE THAT THE POPS FOUND ARE THE ONLY POPS WITH THAT ALLELE--MANY POPS REMAIN TO BE TESTED. At HLA loci, most populations exhibit a high number of low frequency alleles, and thus the whole frequency distribution may be inaccurately estimated due to small sample size. In the table the "chances" to miss an allele according both to its frequency in the population (F) and the size of the sample used (N) are given. N=50 N=75 N=100 N=150 N=200 F=0.010 0.36603 0.22145 0.13398 0.04904 0.01795 F=0.020 0.13262 0.0483 0.01759 0.00233 0.00031 F=0.030 0.04755 0.01037 0.00226 0.00011 0.00001 F=0.050 0.00592 0.00046 0.00004 0.00000 0.00000 From: Sanchez-Mazas A (2002) HLA data analysis in Anthroplogy: basic theory and practice. Proceedings of the 16th European Histocompatibility Conference, Strasbourg, 19-22 March 2002, p.68-83.