Abstract:
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We present a new statistical test of association between a trait and genetic markers, which we theoretically and practically prove to be robust to arbitrarily complex population structure. The statistical test involves a set of parameters that can be directly estimated from large-scale genotyping data, such as those measured in genome-wide associations studies. We also derive a new set of methodologies, called a genotype-conditional association test, shown to provide accurate association tests in populations with complex structures, manifested in both the genetic and non-genetic contributions to the trait. We demonstrate the proposed method on a large simulation study and on the real data.
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