Eagle: Multi-locus association mapping on a genome-wide scale made routine

Abstract

Motivation: We present Eagle, a new method for multi-locus association mapping. The motivation for developing Eagle was to make multi-locus association mapping 'easy' and the method-of-choice. Eagle's strengths are that it (i) is considerably more powerful than single-locus association mapping, (ii) does not suffer from multiple testing issues, (iii) gives results that are immediately interpretable and (iv) has a computational footprint comparable to single-locus association mapping. Results: By conducting a large simulation study, we will show that Eagle finds true and avoids false single-nucleotide polymorphism trait associations better than competing single- and multi-locus methods. We also analyze data from a published mouse study. Eagle found over 50% more validated findings than the state-of-the-art single-locus method.