Fast Genome Wide Association Analysis

Recently a new R package that provides an interface to running PBAT in parallel was published in Bioinformatics.The package is described in the Open Access article here.

This is the first package that I've come across that provides an easy interface to analyse the massive numbers of data that are being generated by the new genotyping arrays such as Illumina's bead station and Affymetrix' SNP chip. Basically the data is split up and small chunks analysed on each processor, with a seperate instance of PBAT running on eahc processor. The graphical R front end allows users and easy way to select their analysis option and then handles splitting the data, sending off jobs and amalgamating the results when they are completed.

Refernces and Links

• Hoffmann T, Lange C (2006) P²BAT: a massive parallel implementation of PBAT for genome-wide association studies in R. Bioinformatics:22:3103-3105
  
• PBAT
• CRAN - Download P²BAT R-package (and many other R packages)
  
• R
  
• http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~tjhoffm/pbatR.html - Detailed instructions on installing and using P²BAT