title: Linkage disequilibrium patterns of the human genome across populations.
abstract: We studied the patterns of linkage disequilibrium (LD) in the human genome among three populations: African Americans, Caucasians and Ashkenazi Jews. These three populations represent admixed, outbred and isolated populations, respectively. The study examined defined chromosomal regions across the whole genome. We found that SNP allele frequencies are highly correlated between Ashkenazi Jews and Caucasians and somewhat distinct in African Americans. In addition, Ashkenazi Jews have a modest increase in LD compared with Caucasians, and both have greater LD than African Americans. The three populations differed more significantly with regard to haplotype heterogeneity. We found, as expected, that Ashkenazi Jews display the greatest extent of homogeneity and African Americans the greatest extent of heterogeneity. We found that most of the variance in LD can be attributed to the difference between regions and markers rather than to that between different population types. The average recombination rates estimated by low-resolution genetic maps can only explain a small fraction of the variance between regions. We found that LD (in terms of r(2)) decreases as a function of distance even within the so-called 'haplotype blocks'. This has significant consequences when using LD mapping for the genetic dissection of complex traits, as higher density SNP maps will be required to scan the genome.
authors.affiliation: The Life Sciences Institute, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel.
authors.forename: Sagiv
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Shifman
authors.forename: Jane
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kuypers
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kokoris
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Yakir
authors.forename: Ariel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Darvasi
mesh_terms: D000483:Alleles; D002875:Chromosomes / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D005787:Gene Frequency; D005819:Genetic Markers; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005828:Genetics, Population; D015894:Genome, Human; D005838:Genotype; D006239:Haplotypes; D006801:Humans; D015810:Linkage Disequilibrium; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D011153:Population; D011995:Recombination, Genetic
chemical_list: D005819:Genetic Markers