Several reports have been published on the use of evenly spaced microsatellites, usually less than 500, for genome-wide linkage analysis of traits or diseases with reasonable heritability. Although this has lead to great successes in mapping of Mendelian disorders, comparable successes still remain to be achieved in complex disease mapping [1]. It is no wonder, therefore, that other possible approaches and tools are constantly being employed in the search for genes that may influence complex traits or diseases. One of these tools is single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) which, although biallelic, when mapped in a highly dense manner are able to provide at least approximately the same amount of information as the common set of microsatellites [2]. The abundance of this type of genetic marker in the genome and the availability of highly automated genotyping procedures have made it increasingly possible to obtain highly dense SNP maps with very high information content compared with the current standard densities used in microsatellite maps for linkage analysis. To explore the utility of dense SNP maps compared with the limited number of microsatellites often available
