gap: Genetic Analysis Package

A preliminary attempt at collecting tools and utilities for genetic data as an R package called gap is described. Genomewide association is then described as a specific example, linking the work of Risch and Merikangas (1996), Long et al. (1997) for family-based and population-based studies, and the counterpart for case-cohort design established by Cai and Zeng (2004). Analysis of staged design as outlined by Skol et al. (2006) and associate methods are discussed. The package is flexible, customizable, and should prove useful to researchers especially in its application to genomewide association studies.