An adequate spatial distribution of hydrological gauging stations presents a lot of interest in linkage with the river regime characterization, water infrastructures design, water resources management and ecological survey.
The MHC microsatellites used here are known to be in linkage with MHC Class I, II, and III genes [67].
In the first stage, microsatellites were typed in the 17q11.2 region, previously independently found to be in linkage with MS. One significant association was found at microsatellite D17S798.
Because the nonMHC loci were highly polymorphic, they are likely to be in linkage with nearby functional loci under balancing selection [68], [69].
Although we measured genetic diversity using microsatellites assumed to be selectively neutral, the MHC markers used here are known to be in linkage with MHC genes [67].
It is also interesting to note that in humans, the −1030 T/C SNP occurs in linkage with the −862 C/A SNP [16], [19], [29], [67] [69].
In addition, the nonMHC markers were highly polymorphic and therefore likely to be in linkage with functional loci under balancing selection [e.g. 68], [69].
Indeed, since as described above, the majority of human TNF promoter SNPs have been found to be in linkage with HLA molecules [16], [17], [19], [21], SNPs may also be in linkage with other genes in the MHC locus with functional effects upon resistance and susceptibility to infectious disease.
On the other hand, T2DM was found to be associated with mitochondrial haplogroups J and T and with polymorphisms T4216C and A4917G (in linkage with J and T), in Caucasian-Brazilian patients [36].
More recently, mutations associated with both hereditary and sporadic neuroblastoma were discovered in the ALK tyrosine kinase [3], [21], a gene mapping to a region previously found in linkage with NB [3], [22].
The focal gene under selection appears to consist of at least three alleles in linkage with the three most frequent haplogroups ({2,2,3}, {4,3,6} and {5,5,7}), considering the variation in correlations (Table 1) and the relationships among the different haplogroups in the MSN.
