Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Methodological challenges of genome-wide association analysis in Africa

2010; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 11; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1038/nrg2731

1471-0064

Yik‐Ying Teo, Kerrin S. Small, Dominic Kwiatkowski,

Genetic and phenotypic traits in livestock

Genome-wide association studies are not widespread in Africa, partly because of the challenges of dealing with population structure and high genomic diversity. New approaches in statistical imputation and whole-genome sequencing are now set to exploit these features for fine mapping causal variants. Medical research in Africa has yet to benefit from the advent of genome-wide association (GWA) analysis, partly because the genotyping tools and statistical methods that have been developed for European and Asian populations struggle to deal with the high levels of genome diversity and population structure in Africa. However, the haplotypic diversity of African populations might help to overcome one of the major roadblocks in GWA research, the fine mapping of causal variants. We review the methodological challenges and consider how GWA studies in Africa will be transformed by new approaches in statistical imputation and large-scale genome sequencing.