Exploiting large scale computing to construct high resolution linkage disequilibrium maps of the human genome

Linkage disequilibrium (LD) maps increase power and precision in association mapping, define optimal marker spacing and identify recombination hot-spots and regions influenced by natural selection. Phase II of HapMap provides approximately 2.8-fold more single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) than phase I for constructing higher resolution maps. LDMAP-cluster, is a parallel program for rapid map construction in a Linux environment used here to construct genome-wide LD maps with >8.2 million SNPs from the phase II data. Availability: The LD maps, LDMAP-cluster and documentation are available from: http://www.som.soton.ac.uk/research/geneticsdiv/epidemiology/LDMAP. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.