title: Automatic pedigree reconstruction for genetic studies in isolated populations.
abstract: This paper describes a tool implemented to automatically reconstruct the pedigree of an isolated population of Northern Italy with the aim of supporting genetic studies. The goal of such studies is to analyze genealogic, clinical and genetic data for genetic dissection of complex diseases. In this context the reconstruction of the population pedigree is fundamental to verify that such population is a genetic isolate and obtain the parental relationships among the individuals participating to the study. The algorithm presented in the paper, from heterogeneous data sources (demographic municipal and parish archives and other data sources), derives the pedigree applying several heuristic rules in a predefined order. One of the main difficulties in performing such task stands in the "record linkage" process that requires the definition of a sufficiently general strategy for managing the ambiguities caused by missing or imprecise/erroneous input data. The paper, finally, presents and discusses the preliminary results obtained by reconstructing the pedigree of four villages from the data collected during the first eighteen months of project.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science and Systems, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy. cristiana.larizza@unipv.it
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Larizza
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Buetti
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Milani
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nuzzo
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sala
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Toniolo
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Bellazzi
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D019295:Computational Biology; D001330:Electronic Data Processing; D005828:Genetics, Population; D006801:Humans; D007558:Italy; D010375:Pedigree; D012424:Rural Population