What is recoding of alleles all about anyway?
One of the problems with highly polymorphic markers is that they can increase the computational requirements of the computers by several orders of magnitude due to the large number of alleles present. This can put the computation of some lod scores out of reach for DOS computers and take many days on higher end systems. So it is important to use methods that reduce the number of alleles, and recoding will reduce the number of alleles in your calculations. The method of recoding of alleles described by J. Ott in the Annals of Human Genetics, 42:255-257 (1978) works very well, but can only be done when the mode of inheritance of the disease is known. An article inspired by Ott’s original work written M. Braverman in Computers and Biomedical Research, 18:24-36 (1985) extends the recoding of alleles in two ways: 1) it allows for pedigrees of arbitrary structure, and 2) it allows for missing/partially known marker phenotypes. It is usually possible to recode marker alleles to some extent ev
