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Title

 

 

 

 

On the challenges of the HapMap resource

 

Authors

Wei Zhang1 and M. Eileen Dolan1, 2, 3

 

Affiliation

1Section of Hematology/Oncology, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; 2Committee on Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacogenomics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; 3Cancer Research Center, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA

 

Email

edolan@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu

 

Phone

+773-702-4441

 

Fax

+773-702-0963; * Corresponding author

 

Article Type

Views & Challenges

 

Date

received December 29, 2007; accepted January 09, 2008; published January 11, 2008

 

Abstract

The International HapMap Project provides a key resource of genotypic data on human lymphoblastoid cell lines derived from four major world populations of European, African, Chinese and Japanese ancestry for researchers to associate with various phenotypic data to find genes affecting health, disease and response to drugs. Recently, the HapMap resource has significantly benefited research areas such as gene expression variation studies. Besides some intrinsic limitations, there are a few challenges that should be considered in the next wave of research using this tremendous resource. We suggest that overcoming these challenges or considering the confounding variables in the interpretation of results can provide more insights into the current views of the human genome as well as complex traits such as drug response variation and susceptibility to common diseases.

 

Keywords

HapMap; lymphoblastoid cell lines; single nuceotide polymorphism; genotype; gene expression

 

Citation

Zhang and Dolan, Bioinformation 2(6): 238-239 (2008)

 

Edited by

P. Kangueane

 

ISSN

0973-2063

 

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.