coPLINK: A complementary tool to PLINK.

Abstract

In genome-wide association studies (GWAS), a wide variety of analysis tools have been designed, leading to various formats of GWAS data. How to convert a dataset in non-PLINK format into PLINK format to use its powerful analysis performance, or to convert a dataset in PLINK format into the format of other analysis tools, is a problem that needs to be faced and solved. To address this issue, we developed a tool called coPLINK, a complementary tool to PLINK, to cooperate with PLINK to implement the conversions of GWAS data formats and to provide some additional functions, such as data files comparison. The tool can implement mutual conversions not only between an existing data format and PLINK PED/BED, but also between a user-defined data format and PLINK PED. The usage and performance of the tool are similar to PLINK. The characteristics of the conversions of existing data formats and user-defined formats make it be a good assistant to PLINK or other tools and, have good potential for GWAS studies or other works.