In this study, researchers developed a genetic simulator for complex pedigree analysis.
This paper details the development of py_ped_sim, a user-friendly and open-source solution for simulating pedigree structures and conducting pedigree genome simulations. This software empowers medical, forensic, and evolutionary genetics researchers to gain deeper insights into the dynamics of genetic inheritance and relatedness within families. Py_ped_sim is a python command-line-based tool that facilitates the simulation of pedigree structures and the genomes of individuals in a pedigree. Py_ped_sim represents pedigrees as directed acyclic graphs, enabling conversion between standard pedigree formats and integration with the forward population genetic simulator, SLiM. Notably, py_ped_sim allows the simulation of varying numbers of offspring for a set of parents, with the capacity to shift the distribution of sibship sizes over generations. The study also includes simulations for events of misattributed paternity, which offers a way to simulate half-sibling relationships. Researchers validated the accuracy of the software by simulating genomes onto diverse family pedigree structures, showing that the estimated kinship coefficients closely approximated expected values.