title: PedMine--a simulated annealing algorithm to identify maximally unrelated individuals in population isolates.
abstract: In family-based genetic studies, it is often useful to identify a subset of unrelated individuals. When such studies are conducted in population isolates, however, most if not all individuals are often detectably related to each other. To identify a set of maximally unrelated (or equivalently, minimally related) individuals, we have implemented simulated annealing, a general-purpose algorithm for solving difficult combinatorial optimization problems. We illustrate our method on data from a genetic study in the Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a population isolate derived from a modest number of founders. Given one or more pedigrees, our program automatically and rapidly extracts a fixed number of maximally unrelated individuals.
  
  
  BACKGROUND
  http://www.hg.med.umich.edu/labs/douglaslab/software.html (version 1.0.0).
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Genetics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. jddoug@umich.edu
authors.forename: Julie A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Douglas
authors.forename: Conner I
authors.initials: CI
authors.lastname: Sandefur
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D003198:Computer Simulation; D008040:Genetic Linkage / Q000235:genetics*; D005828:Genetics, Population; D006801:Humans; D015810:Linkage Disequilibrium / Q000235:genetics*; D008957:Models, Genetic; D010375:Pedigree; D040641:Quantitative Trait Loci