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Approved research

Relationship inference and its application to linkage and IBD mapping in the UK Biobank samples

Principal Investigator: Dr Wei-Min Chen
Approved Research ID: 40462
Approval date: January 15th 2020

Lay summary

Our software tool KING has been used to infer up to 3rd-degree relatedness in the UK Biobank data and the inference results have been already released to all UK Biobank users . As the developer of KING, we would like to apply our latest advances in KING to the UK Biobank data, including 1) the fast IBD segment relationship inference that is even more accurate than the previous kinship coefficient estimation method; and 2) applications such as linkage analysis and IBD mapping that are integrated with the IBD segment inference in KING. We hypothesize that the genetic basis of these traits, including physical measures, health-related outcomes, and diet, may be explained in part by IBD sharing at specific genomic loci. We plan to finish this project in two (up to three) years, and expect to provide more accurate relationship inference results which should benefit many UK Biobank data users, and to report novel gene mapping findings (using linkage and IBD mapping methods) which can improve our understanding of the genetic basis of many complex traits and diseases (such as physical measures and health-related outcomes).