Clustag & wclustag: Hierarchical clustering algorithms for efficient tag-snp selection

Abstract

More than 6 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the human genome have been genotyped by the HapMap project. Although only a proportion of these SNPs are functional, all can be considered as candidate markers for indirect association studies to detect disease-related genetic variants. The complete screening of a gene or a chromosomal region is nevertheless an expensive undertaking for association studies. A key strategy for improving the efficiency of association studies is to select a subset of informative SNPs, called tag SNPs, for analysis. In the chapter, hierarchical clustering algorithms have been proposed for efficient tag SNP selection. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009.