The Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA) generously donated extensive family data on alcoholism, related phenotypes, pertinent covariates and a set of previously analyzed genome-scan microsatellite marker genotypes for use in GAW14. COGA is a nine-site national collaborative study funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) with the primary goal of identifying and characterizing genes that affect the susceptibility to develop alcohol dependence and related phenotypes. COGA has been committed to sharing data with the scientific community to expedite progress in understanding alcoholism and related phenotypes. COGA also provided data to GAW11, and has created an archival database of these families, with both phenotypic data and immortalized cell lines; these data are accessible to investigators for further study through NIAAA . Genome-wide linkage scans, using microsatellite markers, have been performed on both an initial dataset of 105 multigenerational pedigrees and a replication dataset with 157 multigenerational pedigrees. In a departure from GAW tradition, extensive new SNP genotyping was performed on DNA provided by COGA for the
