To aid in the study of genetic diseases, the International Haplotype Map Project has developed a haplotype map of the human genome, a tool that displays common patterns of genetic variation. While data from the project are available for unrestricted public use from the project’s website, the new tools needed to browse the map can be difficult to master for the beginner. This month’s issue of Cold Spring Harbor Protocols features a set of articles with clear, step-by-step instructions for the analysis of HapMap data.

Browsing HapMap Data Using the Genome Browser provides details on how to navigate to and explore HapMap data for a gene or region of interest. Written by Albert Vernon Smith, this protocol shows how to analyze a candidate gene to find out whether there are any common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the immediate vicinity, what those SNPs’ alleles are, and the relative frequencies of the alleles in the population. As one of our featured articles for the month, it’s freely available to subscribers and non-subscribers.

The other articles in the set (subscribers only) are Generating HapMap Data Text Reports Using the Genome Browser, Manipulating HapMap Data Using HaploView, Retrieving HapMap Data Using HapMart, and Retrieving HapMap Data via Bulk Download. If your institution does not yet subscribe and you’d like to see these articles, you can sign up here for a free three month trial.