A design study to identify inconsistencies in kinship information: The case of the 1000 Genomes project

Abstract

Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) examine genetic variants in different individuals to detect variants associated to specific diseases. The 1000 Genomes project is such a collaborative research effort to sequence the genomes of at least 1000 participants of 26 different ethnicities, to establish a detailed summary of human genetic variation. The kinship information is a measure of individuals ancestor relationships within the considered populations. We study the design of kinship data visualizations allowing the experts to discover anomalies in GWAS data. The visual analysis of the 1000 Genomes Project kinship data reveals inconsistencies which call for a deeper analysis of the data quality within this project.