COMPUTATION OF MULTILOCUS PRIOR PROBABILITY OF AUTOZYGOSITY FOR COMPLEX INBRED PEDIGREES

Homozygosity mapping is a very powerful method for mapping rare recess ive diseases in humans. In many applications, it is often desirable to compute prior (or unconditional) multilocus probability of autozygosi ty for inbred pedigrees. This paper proposes a simple yet powerful met hod for computing the prior multilocus autozygosity probability for co mplex inbred pedigrees. The method has an added feature of providing e xplicit multilocus autozygosity probability in terms of recombination fractions, if desired. An example is presented to illustrate the metho d. (C) 1997 Wiley-Liss, Inc.