Multipoint linkage disequilibrium mapping with particular reference to the African-American population

Abstract

A new approach to scanning the genome is presented to detect linkage disequilibrium caused specifically by population admixture. In contrast to current linkage genome scanning methods to find causal genes for complex diseases, this new method should be powerful to find genes for multilocus traits, particularly those genes that lead to the highest population attributable risk. Such a scan using the African-American population is generally feasible for mapping common diseases. A conservative threshold is also provided for such association mapping.