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Not so lost in the genetic crowd

Two new studies report improved statistics to predict whether an individual participated in a genome-wide association study based on aggregate allele or genotype frequency information. They demonstrate that it may be possible to release summary statistics for a subset of genetic markers in a study while maintaining individual privacy.

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Figure 1: Power to detect individual membership in a genome-wide study depends on the number of markers and the sample size.

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Correspondence to Nicholas J Schork.

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Schork, N., Bansal, V. Not so lost in the genetic crowd. Nat Genet 41, 1163–1164 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng1109-1163

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