Hi everyone!

This week at the Applied Statistics Workshop we will be welcoming Nan Laird, Harvey V. Fineberg Research Professor of Public Health in the Department of Biostatistics at the Harvard University School of Public Health. She will be presenting work entitled Multivariate Problems in Genetic Analysis.  Please find the abstract below and on the website.

As usual, we will meet in CGIS Knafel Room 354 from noon to 1:30pm, and lunch will be provided.  See you all there! To view previous Applied Statistics presentations, please visit the website.

-- Aaron Kaufman

Title: Multivariate Problems in Genetic Analysis

Abstract:Complex diseases have multiple underlying contributing factors, both genetic and environmental. In addition, the disease syndrome is often characterized by numerous clinical traits that may be analyzed for association with genes along with the disease status. Genome Wide Association Analysis (GWAS) has been highly successful in identifying some genetic loci associated with many disease syndromes and/or selected traits. The purpose of the analysis of multiple traits may be to show consistency and thereby strengthen the evidence, or to identify different loci for different traits, or to gain additional power for new loci. In this talk we describe an approach to integrating multiple phenotypes based on the concepts of heritability and co-heritability. Our approach is designed for GWAS and uses the genetic data both for the estimation of heritability and using samples of cases and controls and for testing association.

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