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KLINK: Kinship analysis with linked markers

KLINK is an R package and Shiny app for LR calculations in forensic kinship testing, with support for pairwise linked STR markers. It is built on pedsuite, with a dedicated KLINK homepage.

For details, see the paper KLINK: A program for kinship testing with pairwise linked STR markers (Vigeland and Gilfillan, 2026, Forensic Science International: Genetics).

Try the online app: https://magnusdv.shinyapps.io/klink/

Running KLINK locally

If you are working with sensitive data, you might want to run KLINK locally/offline. To set this up, first install the KLINK package in R:

install.packages("KLINK")

Then you may start KLINK as follows:

KLINK::launchApp()

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Version

Install

install.packages('KLINK')

Monthly Downloads

318

Version

1.2.2

License

GPL (>= 3)

Issues

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Maintainer

Magnus Vigeland

Last Published

August 3rd, 2026

Functions in KLINK (1.2.2)

markerSummary

Generate table of marker data
launchApp

Launch KLINK
loadFamFile

Load .fam file
getLinkedPairs

Identify linked marker pairs
map50

Genetic marker map
KLINK-package

KLINK: Kinship Analysis with Linked Markers
getTotals

Get LR totals
linkedLR

LR with pairwise linked markers
loadMap

Load genetic map
writeResult

Write data and results to Excel
parseXML

Parse XML file associated with .fam file
sibship

Dataset for a full vs half sibship case
halfsib

Dataset for a case involving a putative half sibling.
paternity

Dataset for a paternity case