COMPARISON OF PARAMETRIC AND NONPARAMETRIC METHODS TO MAP OLIGOGENES BY LINKAGE

A sample of 95 sib pairs affected with insulin-dependent diabetes and typed with their normal parents for 28 markers on chromosome 6 has bee n analyzed by several methods. When appropriate parameters are efficie ntly estimated, a parametric model is equivalent to the beta model, wh ich is superior to nonparametric alternatives both in single point tes ts (as found previously) and in multipoint tests. Theory is given for meta-analysis combined with allelic association, and problems that may be associated with errors of map location and/or marker typing are id entified, Reducing by multipoint analysis the number of association te sts in a dense map can give a 3-fold reduction in the critical led, an d therefore in the cost of positional cloning.