Non-Parametric Methods in Genetic Linkage Analysis

One of the most important goals for researchers in the clinic is to try to find newer and more effective ways to diagnose and cure the diseases. These clinical advances can create new points of view in other sciences and their combination with basic sciences such as statistics can improve these researches. In statistical genetics, linkage analysis is a way of finding the exact locus of a disease gene on a specific chromosome. Finding the location of a specific gene using the mapping strategy or producing an efficient drug for effective treatment are the most important issues in genetic fields. In this study, nonparametric methods in genetic linkage analysis will be discussed. Based on the conducted studies in different databases such as the NCBI (PubMed), Scopus, Science Direct, Google Scholar, Iran Medex, SID, and Magiran, few Iranian articles published in English language and also a limited number of Iranian investigations were found therefore, there are few studies om the combination of genetic linkage analysis and statistics in the Iranian population and the present articles in this field are scarce. This paper will be a review of the nonparametric linkage analysis. At first, the basic concepts of allele sharing identical by descent (IBD) and allele sharing identical by state (IBS) will be explained and then, nonparametric linkage analysis will be introduced. In the second step, the explained method will be compared with each other and their weaknesses and strengths will be discussed. Also, the useful software for this type of analysis will be present.Comprehensive work on this issue needs expanded efforts and expending more time.