Genotyping of human class I alcohol dehydrogenase Analysis of enzymatically amplified DNA with allele‐specific oligonucleotides

Large inter-individual differences are noted in the susceptibility to alcohol-related problems. Part of this variation may be due to the different isoenzyme patterns of the alcohol-metabolizing enzymes and, consequently, different pharmacokinetics of alcohol degradation. We have used the polymerase chain reaction and oligonucleotide hybridization to amplify and analyze class I alcohol dehydrogenase isoenzyme-specific genomic DNA. The method unambiguously distinguishes between different allelic variants and thus provides a new means of elucidating the alcohol dehydrogenase isoenzyme pattern of humans.