linehan at ceph.cephb.fr (Paul Linehan) wrote:
> When one is performing a study of association of alleles with a
>particular trait, is there any point in studying microsatellites and frequencies
>of different microsat alleles which may have an association with the trait.
Yes certainly.
>I thought that microsats would evolve too quickly to be of use, but I'm open
>to contradiction. References particularly welcome.
I think two studies in Nature Genetics recently have reported linkage
disequilibrium between diabetes and microsatellites. Other disorders
also demonstrate this phenomenon. They do seem to be conserved over
time, and we described linkage disequilibrium between two different
microsatellite polymorphisms:
Sherrington R, Melmer G, Dixon M, Curtis D, Mankoo B, Kalsi G, Gurling
HMD. Linkage disequilibrium between two highly polymorphic
microsatellites. American Journal of Human Genetics 1991 49: 966-971.
Analysing polymorphisms with large numbers of alleles can present
difficulties. Joe Terwilliger recently described a method in Am J Hum
Genet, and we have described other methods for use in association and
transmission disequilibrium studies respectively:
Sham PC, Curtis D. Monte Carlo tests for associations between disease
and alleles at highly polymorphic loci. Ann Hum Genet 1995 59: 97-105.
Sham PC, Curtis D. An extended transmission/disequilibrium test (TDT)
for multi-allele marker loci. Ann Hum Genet 1995: 323-336.
Dave Curtis (dcurtis at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk)
Institute of Psychiatry, London
http://www.iop.bpmf.ac.uk/home/depts/psychmed/general/dcurtis/dcurtis.htm
