Exploring correlations among copy number variants

Joseph  Abraham; Thomas  LaFramboise

doi:10.4236/ojgen.2012.23018

Joseph Abraham^*, Thomas LaFramboise

Abstract: There have been a great many recent studies investigating the extent of Copy Number Variation in the genomes of various species such as human, cattle, dogs and many others. The results from these studies indicate that the extent of the Copy Number Variation in the genome is considerable, and that in humans and in cattle, frequencies of different Copy Number Variants may differ in different breeds/ethnicities. This is not entirely unexpected as allele frequencies of certain loci vary with different breeds/ ethnicities/species and many known Copy Number Variants behave similarly to ordinary markers as regards Mendelian segregation. It is also well known in many instances, species/breeds/ethnicities show variation not only in marker allele frequencies, but also in the extent of Linkage Disequilibrium between markers. Thus it is worth investigating the extent of association between Copy Number Variants in different populations. In this paper we will investigate the extent of correlations between selected Copy Number Variants in different human populations and show that statistically significant correlations exist and are strongly population dependent.

Keywords: Copy Number Variant; Pathway; Selection

Cite this paper: Abraham, J. and LaFramboise, T. (2012) Exploring correlations among copy number variants. Open Journal of Genetics, 2, 131-135. doi: 10.4236/ojgen.2012.23018.

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