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Genome-wide association studies in Plasmodium species

Bridget Penman1, Caroline Buckee1, Sunetra Gupta1 and Sean Nee2*

Author Affiliations

1 Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK

2 Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, UK

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BMC Biology 2010, 8:90 doi:10.1186/1741-7007-8-90

Published: 13 July 2010

Abstract

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) look for correlations between traits of interest and genetic markers spread throughout the genome. A recent study in BMC Genetics has found that populations of the malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax should be amenable to GWAS searching for a genetic basis of parasite pathogenicity. Geographical substructure in populations may, however, prove a problem in interpreting the results.

See research article http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2156/11/65 webcite