Multifactor dimensionality reduction for graphics processing units enables genome-wide testing of epistasis in sporadic ALS.

ABSTRACT:

Motivation

Epistasis, the presence of gene-gene interactions, has been hypothesized to be at the root of many common human diseases, but current genome-wide association studies largely ignore its role. Multifactor dimensionality reduction (MDR) is a powerful model-free method for detecting epistatic relationships between genes, but computational costs have made its application to genome-wide data difficult. Graphics processing units (GPUs), the hardware responsible for rendering computer games, are powerful parallel processors. Using GPUs to run MDR on a genome-wide dataset allows for statistically rigorous testing of epistasis.

Results

The implementation of MDR for GPUs (MDRGPU) includes core features of the widely used Java software package, MDR. This GPU implementation al

SUBMITTER: Greene CS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2828117 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature