Background: Copy number variations (CNVs) and polymorphisms (CNPs) have only recently gained the genetic community's attention. Conservative estimates have shown that CNVs and CNPs might affect more than 10% of the genome and that they may be at least as important as single nucleotide polymorphisms in assessing human variability. Widely used tools for CNP analysis have been implemented in Birdsuite and PLINK for the purpose of conducting genetic association studies based on the unpartitioned total number of CNP copies provided by the intensities from Affymetrix's Genome-Wide Human SNP Array. Here, we are interested in partitioning copy number variations and polymorphisms in extended pedigrees for the purpose of linkage analysis on familial data. Results: We have developed CNGen, a new software for the partitioning of copy number polymorphism using the integrated genotypes from Birdsuite with the Affymetrix platform. The algorithm applied to familial trios or extended pedigre...
Louis-Philippe Lemieux Perreault, Gregor U. Andelf