# OPENMENDEL: A Cooperative Programming Project for Statistical Genetics

## TL;DR

OPENMENDEL is an open-source software project designed to enhance statistical genetics research by enabling scalable, reproducible, and collaborative genomewide association studies with modern computing capabilities.

## Contribution

It introduces an open-source platform that supports scalable, parallel, and cloud-based genetic data analysis, fostering collaboration among diverse scientific communities.

## Key findings

- Supports large-scale GWAS data analysis
- Enables reproducible and interactive research workflows
- Facilitates collaboration across disciplines

## Abstract

Statistical methods for genomewide association studies (GWAS) continue to improve. However, the increasing volume and variety of genetic and genomic data make computational speed and ease of data manipulation mandatory in future software. In our view, a collaborative effort of statistical geneticists is required to develop open source software targeted to genetic epidemiology. Our attempt to meet this need is called the OPENMENDELproject (https://openmendel.github.io). It aims to (1) enable interactive and reproducible analyses with informative intermediate results, (2) scale to big data analytics, (3) embrace parallel and distributed computing, (4) adapt to rapid hardware evolution, (5) allow cloud computing, (6) allow integration of varied genetic data types, and (7) foster easy communication between clinicians, geneticists, statisticians, and computer scientists. This article reviews and makes recommendations to the genetic epidemiology community in the context of the OPENMENDEL project.