Linkage studies refer to a scientific method used to explore the connection between specific genes and certain traits or diseases in families. These studies help scientists identify and understand the links between certain genes and particular characteristics or diseases present in a family's history.
Full definition
Leveraging deCODE's ability to conduct genome - wide
linkage studies using large extended families from across the population, the company's scientists were able to approach anxiety as a broadly defined disorder that encompasses all of these complexities.
Maternal alcohol use disorder and child school attendance outcomes for non-Indigenous and Indigenous children in Western Australia: a population cohort record linkage study
Pervasive influence of maternal and paternal criminal offending on early childhood development: a population
data linkage study.
«Seeing
linkage studies in this world of GWAs is rare,» he says, but he maintains that the study «really moves the field along.»
Nearly 600 patients and 550 unaffected relatives volunteered to be genotyped for the study, making it one of the largest
linkage studies ever conducted.
Earlier linkage studies lead the team of geneticists, psychiatrists and neuroscientists to examine chromosome 22 more closelyand in particular, they focused on a gene encoding a protein called WKL1.
Linkage studies use genetic markers, which act like signposts, pointing researchers to the general area on the chromosome where genes associated with certain traits likely reside.
And the kind of DNA analysis used, known as a
genetic linkage study, has largely been superseded by other techniques.
His work on statistical standards for genome -
wide linkage studies has transformed experimental design and become the gold standard for such experiments.
A linkage study identifies only broad regions containing dozens or even hundreds of genes, whereas GWA studies often allow the association of a specific gene with a certain trait in the population.
That approach would be preferable, but
a linkage study was the only way to directly replicate Hamer's work, Sanders says.
Sex - differences in the metabolic health of offspring of parents with diabetes: a record - linkage study
The evidence emerged from
a linkage study of Icelandic families that showed that schizophrenia correlated with an area on the eighth of the 23 pairs of human chromosomes.
CSGB scientists conduct studies aimed at understanding complex genetic diseases and developing new statistical methods and software to analyze data sets emanating from large - scale genetic association and
linkage studies.
Assessing Preventable Hospitalisation InDicators (APHID): protocol for a data -
linkage study using cohort study and administrative data