For GAW14, the overarching theme was comparison of microsatellite and single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers for genome-wide scans and the statistical methods that can best exploit the information provided in such scans for linkage and association studies. Two datasets were available for GAW14 participants to analyze. As is traditional at GAWs, one of these was a simulated dataset and one consisted of data from an actual human study. Attempts were made in the data simulation to mirror many of the characteristics of the real dataset, including a map of microsatellite markers plus a denser map of SNP markers that were available for fine-mapping. Both datasets are discussed briefly below, and more detailed descriptions can be found in Edenberg et al. [1] and Greenberg et al. [2].
