Analysis of complex traits using neural networks

A recently developed approach that employs artificial neural networks (ANNs ) was applied to the simulated data set to identify sets of marker loci inv olved in disease etiology. In this implementation, ANNs are trained to pred ict the disease state (output) from the given genetic marker data(input). A contribution value (CV) for each locus is calculated from the weights that represent the strength of the connections for the trained ANN; a higher CV indicates a higher probability of linkage. The highest CV values were chos en as the most likely candidate regions involved in the disease. (C) 1999 W iley-Liss, Inc.