title: PedGenie: an analysis approach for genetic association testing in extended pedigrees and genealogies of arbitrary size.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  We present a general approach to perform association analyses in pedigrees of arbitrary size and structure, which also allows for a mixture of pedigree members and independent individuals to be analyzed together, to test genetic markers and qualitative or quantitative traits. Our software, PedGenie, uses Monte Carlo significance testing to provide a valid test for related individuals that can be applied to any test statistic, including transmission disequilibrium statistics. Single locus at a time, composite genotype tests, and haplotype analyses may all be performed. We illustrate the validity and functionality of PedGenie using simulated and real data sets. For the real data set, we evaluated the role of two tagging-single nucleotide polymorphisms (tSNPs) in the DNA repair gene, NBS1, and their association with female breast cancer in 462 cases and 572 controls selected to be BRCA1/2 mutation negative from 139 high-risk Utah breast cancer families.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The results from PedGenie were shown to be valid both for accurate p-value calculations and consideration of pedigree structure in the simulated data set. A nominally significant association with breast cancer was observed with the NBS1 tSNP rs709816 for carriage of the rare allele (OR = 1.61, 95% CI = 1.10-2.35, p = 0.019).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  PedGenie is a flexible and valid statistical tool that is intuitively simple to understand, makes efficient use of all the data available from pedigrees without requiring trimming, and is flexible to the types of tests to which it can be applied. Further, our analyses of real data indicate NBS1 may play a role in the genetic etiology of heritable breast cancer.
authors.affiliation: Genetic Epidemiology Division, Department of Medical Informatics, University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. kristina.allen@utah.edu
authors.forename: Kristina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Allen-Brady
authors.forename: Jathine
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wong
authors.forename: Nicola J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Camp
mesh_terms: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000378:metabolism; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics*; D018797:Cell Cycle Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D002874:Chromosome Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D015810:Linkage Disequilibrium / Q000235:genetics*; D009687:Nuclear Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D010375:Pedigree; D016415:Sequence Alignment / Q000379:methods; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA / Q000379:methods*; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D018797:Cell Cycle Proteins; C112156:NBN protein, human; D009687:Nuclear Proteins