Local Ancestry Inference in Large Pedigrees

Sci Rep. 2020 Jan 13;10(1):189. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-57039-w.

Abstract

Local ancestry, defined as the genetic ancestry at a genomic location of an admixed individual, is widely used as a genetic marker in genetic association and evolutionary genetics studies. Many methods have been developed to infer the local ancestries in a set of unrelated individuals, a few of them have been extended to small nuclear families, but none can be applied to large (e.g. three-generation) pedigrees. In this study, we developed a method, FamANC, that can improve the accuracy of local ancestry inference in large pedigrees by: (1) using an existing algorithm to infer local ancestries for all individuals in a family, assuming (contrary to fact) they are unrelated, and (2) improving its accuracy by correcting inference errors using pedigree structure. Applied on African-American pedigrees from the Cleveland Family Study, FamANC was able to correct all identified Mendelian errors and most of double crossovers.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Computer Simulation
  • Ethnicity / genetics*
  • Genetics, Population*
  • Genotype
  • Haplotypes
  • Humans
  • Models, Genetic*
  • Models, Statistical*
  • Pedigree
  • Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide*