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Selection of Affected Individuals

Fingerlin et al (2004) show that within family IBD sharing information can be used to improve the power of genetic association studies. When the --select command line option is used, MERLIN calculates the amount of sharing between each affected individual in a family and other affected individuals.

Output files

Summary results for this analysis are stored in the file merlin.sel. Each line in this file summarizes IBD sharing information for a particular affected individual, location and trait. Results include the observed NPL pairs score as well as the summed kinship coefficients between each affected individual and all other affecteds.

This file can be analyzed manually, but for convenience the individual with the highest score in each linked family is tagged with the words "LINKED BEST". In unlinked families, only the word "BEST" appears. In the case of ties, one of the individuals with equivalent sharing scores is selected at random.

These tags make it simple to extract a list including only the selected cases, using the grep command. For example, the command:

 prompt> grep "LINKED BEST" merlin.sel 

Produces a list of individuals whoe share the most with other affecteds in each family where the NPL statistic is greater than or equal to zero. Alternatively, it is possible to extract a list of all individuals with the most evidence for sharing with other affecteds in all families (whether linked or not) with the following command:

 prompt> grep "BEST" merlin.sel 

Example

Consider the pedigree illustrated above, with three affected individuals genotyped for a single microsatellite marker. In this pedigree, the chromosomes carried by any affected individual are expected to occur a total of 4 times among all affecteds and thus the expected sum of kinship coefficients is 1.0. At the genotyped microsatellite marker, the chromosomes carried by the first affected individual occur 4 times among all affected individuals. In contrast, the chromosomes carried by the second and third affected individuals occur 5 times (of a possible six) among the three affecteds -- suggesting that these are more likely to carry risk alleles for the disease.

Analysing this family would produce the following output table:

FamilyIndividualPositionTrait NPL ScoreIndividual Score 
FAM_AII-1ExpectedDisease 0.0001.000 
FAM_AII-2ExpectedDisease 0.0001.000 
FAM_AII-3ExpectedDisease 0.0001.000 
FAM_AII-1MicrosatDisease 0.8161.000 
FAM_AII-2MicrosatDisease 0.8161.250LINKED BEST
FAM_AII-3MicrosatDisease 0.8161.250 

Implementation Details

The selection strategy implemented in Merlin is analogous to Spairs(i) strategy described by Fingerlin et al (2004). It is calculated by pairing each affected individual in turn with all other affected individuals and calculating the sum of their kinship coefficients. The individual whose selection results in the highest sum is labeled the "BEST" in each family. While this strategy has been shown to be nearly optimal in sibships, it is possible that other strategies (such as the Sall(i) statistic suggested by Fingerlin et al) perform better in extended pedigrees.

Key to the Output Table

The columns in the merlin.sel file correspond to:

ColumnContents
Family The family id. Scores are grouped first by chromosome, then by family.
Individual The individual. There will be one row for each affected individual.
Position The position being analyzed. If this column reads expected, this row records the expected sharing score Spairs(i) for each individual, conditional on the pedigree structure, but ignoring the marker data
Trait The trait being evaluated. Each trait in the pedigree will be analyzed in turn.
NPL Score The family specific Spairs score, which can be used to identify linked (Spairs > 0) and unlinked (Spairs < 0) families.
Individual Score The individual Spairs(i) score, as defined by Fingerlin et al (2004). This can be used to compare different affected individuals within a family.
Label Labels in this final column are helpful when using the UNIX command grep to identify the most informative individuals. Each individual will either be untagged or marked "BEST" for the highest individual score within each family (by trait and position). The additional tag "LINKED" will be printed for individuals who have the highest score and are in a linked family (Spairs > 0).

 
 

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