Genetic ME–a visualization application for merging and editing pedigrees for genetic studies

BMC Research Notes

Michael B. Gorin²  Yvette P. Conley¹  Daniel E. Weeks³  Maria C. Ortube⁴  Xin Wei⁴  Yingda Jiang⁵  Diem K. Bui⁴ 

[1] Department of Health Promotion and Development, School of Nursing, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh 15261, PA, USA;Department of Human Genetics, David Geffen School of Medicine–UCLA, Los Angeles 90095, CA, USA;Department of Human Genetics, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh 15261, PA, USA;Department of Ophthalmology, David Geffen School of Medicine–UCLA, Los Angeles 90095, CA, USA;Department of Biostatistics, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh 15261, PA, USA

关键词: Software;    Pedigree;    Java;    Human;    Algorithms;   

Others  :  1231971
DOI  :  10.1186/s13104-015-1131-y

 received in 2015-04-19, accepted in 2015-04-21,  发布年份 2015

【 摘 要 】

Background

In order to study the genetics of diseases more accurately and effectively, one often collects large families. Different members of a large family may provide differing information about the structure and make-up of their pedigree. Thus, software is needed to facilitate reconciliation of pedigrees collected independently from multiple informants from a single large family to create a unified pedigree that is based on the best composite information available.

Findings

Our implementation demonstrates that Genetic ME performs merging in terms of adding, replacing and combining information from two pedigrees. Through a tracking process, all of the changes made to the data set for the individuals can be traced back to their original source material. A new pedigree structure can be easily visualized while reconciling disparate information from multiple pedigrees.

Methods

We developed the Genetic Merging & Editing (Genetic ME) program, an open source Java application built on top of CraneFoot and Ghostscript, to support comparing, editing and merging of pedigrees collected from multiple sources in a visually-oriented manner.

Conclusions

Genetic ME constitutes an ideal addition to software packages for reconciling pedigree information from multiple sources. Genetic ME provides a friendly graphical user interface, traces the changes made by users, and produces viewable merged pedigree structures able to be further used by other popular analysis programs.

【 授权许可】

   
2015 Bui et al.

【 图 表 】

Fig. 1.

【 参考文献 】

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