GenABEL: an R library for genome-wide association analysis

Here we describe an R library for genome-wide association (GWA) analysis. It implements effective storage and handling of GWA data, fast procedures for genetic data quality control, testing of association of single nucleoticle polymorphisms with binary or quantitative traits, visualization of results and also provides easy interfaces to standard statistical and graphical procedures implemented in base R and special R libraries for genetic analysis. We evaluated GenABEL using one simulated and two real data sets. We conclude that GenABEL enables the analysis of GWA data on desktop computers.