Selecting pedigrees for linkage analysis of a quantitative trait: the expected number of informative meioses. |
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| Authors: | M Boehnke K H Omoto J M Arduino |
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| Affiliation: | Department of Biostatistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109. |
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| Abstract: | With evidence of segregation at a major locus for a quantitative trait having been found, a logical next step is to select a subset of the pedigrees to include in a linkage study to map the major locus. Ideally this subset should include much of the linkage information in the sample but include only a fraction of the pedigrees. We previously described a strategy for selecting pedigrees for linkage analysis of a quantitative trait on the basis of a pedigree likelihood-ratio statistic. For quantitative traits controlled by a major locus with a rare dominant allele, the likelihood-ratio strategy extracted nearly all the information for linkage while typically requiring marker data on only about one-third of the pedigrees. Here, we describe a new strategy to select pedigrees for linkage analysis on the basis of the expected number of potentially informative meioses in each pedigree. We demonstrate that this informative-meioses strategy provides an efficient and more general means to select pedigrees for a linkage study of a quantitative trait. |
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