Mapsnp: An R Package to Plot a Genomic Map for Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms

Single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) is one of the most common sources of genetic variations of the genome. Currently, SNPs are a main target for most genetic association studies. Visualizing genomic coordinates of SNPs, including their physical location relative to their host gene, and the structure of the relevant transcripts, may provide intuitive supplements to the understanding of their functions. Nevertheless, to date, no such easy-to-use programming tools exist. Therefore, we developed an R package, “mapsnp”, to plot genomic map for a panel of SNPs within a genome region of interest, including the relative chromosome location and the transcripts in the region. mapsnp is a simple and flexible software package which can be used to visualize a genomic map for SNPs, integrating a chromosome ideogram, genomic coordinates, SNP locations and SNP labels.