Low-Order Polynomial Trends of Female-to-Male Map Distance Ratios along Human Chromosomes

Abstract

Recombination rates in humans tend to be sex specific. For a given map interval delimited by genetic markers, the difference between male and female recombination rates may be measured by the ration, R, of female-to-male map distance. On average over all chromosomes, R is closed to 2, but this ratio is region specific. The spatial variation of R can be captured by a low-order (linear, quadratic, etc) trend across the length of the chromosome. Chromosome maps have been constructed that take into account such trends. The resulting map distances tend to be more accurate than when such trends are ignored. Consequently, linkage analysis using such map distances should increase the probability to localize susceptible genes. In this talk, the algorithm that was used to estimate R will be discussed and the summary results for parsimonious sex-specific chromosome maps will be presented.