A Simple Method to Detect a Single Gene that Determines a Categorical Trait with Incomplete Penetrance

Abstract

This paper presents a simple method to infer mode of inheritance, penetrance values, allele frequency andgenotype probabilities for a putative biallelic gene that affects a trait with all-or-none expression.Penetrance is assumed to be unaffected by other genes. The preliminary analysis tests the method in avariety of scenarios. Results can be unreliable for data generated with overdominance plus partialpenetrance, but otherwise results were good, with mode of inheritance, allele frequency and penetranceestimated close to true values. The method will work for multiple mutually-exclusive phenotypic classes.