BMC Bioinformatics

official impact factor 3.03

Open Access Methodology article

SNP haplotype tagging from DNA pools of two individuals

Josephine Hoh1, Fumihiko Matsuda2, Xu Peng2, Daniela Markovic1, Mark G Lathrop2 and Jurg Ott1*

Author Affiliations

1 Laboratory of Statistical Genetics, Rockefeller University, New York, NY 10021, USA

2 Centre National de Génotypage, 91057 Evry, France

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BMC Bioinformatics 2003, 4:14 doi:10.1186/1471-2105-4-14

Published: 22 April 2003

Abstract

Background

DNA pooling is a technique to reduce genotyping effort while incurring only minor losses in accuracy of allele frequency estimates for single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers.

Results

We present an algorithm for reconstructing haplotypes (alleles for multiple SNPs on same chromosome) from pools of two individual DNAs, in which Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium conditions or other assumptions are not required. The program outputs, in addition to inferred haplotypes, a minimal number of haplotype-tagging SNPs that are identified after an exhaustive search procedure.

Conclusion

Our method and algorithms lead to a significant reduction in genotyping effort, for example, in case-control disease association studies while maintaining the possibility of reconstructing haplotypes under very general conditions.