KLINK 1.2.2

A paper presenting KLINK has been published in FSI:Genetics (Vigeland and Gilfillan, 2026):
KLINK: A program for kinship testing with pairwise linked STR markers.

New app features

• More robust loading of custom marker maps, also supporting files using comma as decimal separator.
• Custom marker maps may now be provided as Excel files. This includes KLINK download files, which contain the marker map in the first sheet.
• Requires pedtools 2.11.0 and pedprobr 1.1.0, giving more efficient likelihood calculations and improved handling of looped pedigrees.

Minor changes and fixes

• Fix karyogram colours when there are many linked pairs.
• Control the height of tables in the app.
• General code and documentation clean-up.

KLINK 1.2.0

New app features

• Added help buttons and doc pages.
• Moved the "Marker map" control down to Settings.
• New setting controlling mutation models.
• Moved the "Max dist" input field, and changed the label to "Unlinked >".
• Improved the karyogram plot.

Minor changes and fixes

• Excel output: A few Norwegian words have been replaced by English.
• Excel output: Some obsolete content has been removed, included the 'Unlinked report' sheet.
• Don't relabel to Person1, Person2, ... if everyone has short names.
• Explicitly import shinyBS, which was mistakenly left out in the last version.
• Fix row names in result tables.
• Better checks for malformed map files.

KLINK 1.1.0

New features

• Added new datasets sibship and halfsib. In the app, these are available as Example1 and Example2, respectively.

• The default genetic map, previously built-in to KLINK, has been moved to the norSTR package under the name map50, and is now imported from there.

• KLINK now employs the special lumping methods recently implemented in pedprobr and pedmut. This permits the use of complex mutation models (e.g. Stepwise) in most common pedigrees, including paternity and full/half siblings. In larger pedigrees, nonlumpable models are replaced with the simpler 'Equal' model.

• The LR table shown in the app has a new look, now using the same layout and marker order as the other tables.
  The "LR table" sheet of the Excel download also uses this marker order.
  Note: The Report sheets has not changed.

• New app controls Empty markers (hide/show) and Likelihoods (hide/show/loglik) for the LR table in the app and the Excel download.

• New app control Decimals for setting the number of decimals in displayed tables.

• Inconsistent marker names are handled more gracefully. For instance, Penta D, Penta.D, PentaD, PENTA D are now recognised as the same marker (similarly for other markers, notably Penta E and vWA).

• The Marker data table now excludes unused mutation model columns (app only).

• The Excel download includes a new sheet, Plots, containing the two pedigree plots.

• Added tooltips explaining app controls and table columns.

• Busy-indicator: A pulsating effect is now shown when the app is busy.

• Renamed columns in the linkage map: Chrom -> Chr and PosCM -> cM. When loading custom maps, variations of these names are accepted.

• Only on shinyapp.io: Show banner warning about uploading sensitive data.

Minor changes and fixes

• Empty the .xml field when a new .fam file is loaded.

• RStudio now stops the app when the user closes the browser.

• Graceful handling of input without data.

• The Marker map control has been moved up to the Input app region.

• Fixed a bug appearing when the input file contains an unmapped single marker.

• Fixed a bug giving slightly incorrect LR values in some cases when a stepwise mutation model was used. This bug was related to lumping, which is now handled differently (see entry under New features).

KLINK 1.0.2

• Fixed bug affecting download when XML initials contain hyphens.

KLINK 1.0.1

• Modified the selection of markers for the Unlinked report. Within each pair, the marker with highest PIC value is chosen. For consistency, the PIC values used in this calculation are now always based on the same database (NorskDB_2024).

• Minor tweaks of app appearance.

KLINK 1.0.0

This version is a major update of both the KLINK package and the shiny app.

• Expanded built-in genetic map covering 50 common STR markers, up from 18. Unlike the previous version, where linkage pairs were hard coded, the markers are now dynamically paired up after data is loaded, ensuring more optimal use of the data.

• The user may set a maximum linkage distance (cM), with the effect that markers farther than this are considered unlinked.

• Improved karyogram plot for clearer visualisation of markers and linkage.

• Improved readability of tables, using colours to indicate linked markers.

• New button "Reset" resetting all fields of the shiny app.

• New XML input field allowing the user to integrate data from other sources (particularly: Amelogenin genotypes and ID initials).

KLINK 0.7.3

• Update pedprobr version to 0.9.3, giving much faster likelihood calculations in many cases.

• Show wait cursor during LR calculations.

• Use scientific format also for small LR totals in-app.

• Unlinked report: Prioritise D5S2500 over D5S2800 if both are present, and similarly D10S2325 over D10S1435, and D19S253 over D19S433 (reverses previous behaviour).

• Fix typos in built-in linkage map.

• Fix outdated mutation model in dataset paternity.

KLINK 0.7.2

• Internal reorganisation, moving the Shiny code to inst/shiny/app.R.

• launchApp() is now the main launching function, with runKLINK() as an alias.

• Fixes a minor regression error in the previous version.

KLINK 0.6.1

• First CRAN release.