SNPlotz: a generic genome plot tool to aid the SNP association studies

Background High throughput SNP genotyping has empowered livestock researchers to perform genome wide association studies to discover genes responsible for complex traits or economically important quantitative traits. The analysis of large numbers of genotypes is not only a challenge for statistical data analysis but also presents a tedious job for users to interpret and comprehend the large number of statistics generated. A simple and fast approach is to plot the phenotypic association values of each SNP against their genome locations. The benefit is twofold: (1) certain genome locations may quickly draw