Identifying the susceptibility gene(s) in a set of trait-linked genes using genotype data

There are generally three steps to isolate a disease linkage-susceptibility gene: genome-wide scan, fine mapping, and, last, positional cloning. The last step is time consuming and involves intensive laboratory work. In some cases, fine mapping cannot proceed further on a set of markers because they are tightly linked. For years, genetic statisticians have been trying different ways to narrow the fine-mapping results to provide some guidance for the next step of laboratory work. Although these methods are practical and efficient, most of them are based on IBD data, which usually can be inferred only from the genotype data with some uncertainty. The corresponding methods thus have no greater power than one using genotype data directly. Also, IBD-based methods apply only to relative pair data. Here, using genotype data, we have developed a statistical hypothesis-testing method to pinpoint a SNP, or SNPs, suspected of responsibility for a disease trait linkage among a set of SNPs tightly linked in a region. Our method uses genotype data of affected individuals or case-control studies, which are widely available in the laboratory. The testing statistic can be constructed using any genotype-based disease-marker disequilibrium measure and is asymptotically distributed as a chi-square mixture. This method can be used for singleton data, relative pair data, or general pedigree data. We have applied the method to simulated data as well as a real data set; it gives satisfactory results.