A robust approach for Linkage detection using pedigrees

Allele sharing method or trait-model-free approach is a robust technique for linkage detection. In allele sharing method, the association between the joint inheritance of the trait and a set of markers in pedigrees is studied without modelling the trait. This paper aims at an efficient implementation of allele-sharing method for binary trait in multi-generation pedigrees that includes construction of a robust identity by descent measure, and the use of a computationally efficient testing procedure to test for linkage. Simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed method performs well on extended pedigrees and appears to outperform the existing allele-sharing approaches on moderate size pedigrees.