- Location
- Virtual
- Series/Type
- Community Outreach Event, DLSPH Event
- Dates
- February 4, 2022 from 3:30pm to 4:30pm
Links
Join us for the next instalment of the STAGE International Speaker Seminar Series (ISSS) with:
Dr. David Balding
Honorary Professor of Statistical Genetics, University of Melbourne
Director, Melbourne Integrative Genomics
Talk Title:
How are the causes of complex disease distributed in the human genome
Abstract:
The advent of very large, richly-phenotyped and high-quality human genomics datasets, together with the development of models that allow joint analyses of all GWAS test statistics, have led to big advances in understanding the genomic architecture of complex traits. However, models for the analysis of genome-wide SNPs, particularly for analyses based on association test statistics rather than individual genotype data, often rest on simplistic assumptions about the distribution of causal variation across the genome. Different approaches have led to discordant results about the genomic architecture of complex traits. I will review recent progress in genome-wide models of the heritability of complex human traits. In particular we look at the relationship between heritability and a range of genome annotation features, as well as linkage disequilibrium and minor allele fraction (MAF). The relationship between MAF and heritability is informative about the effects of negative or purifying selection, for different traits and in different genome regions. I will also discuss how the heritability models that arise from our work can be used to improve genomic prediction. This work leads to improved insights into the genomic architecture of complex traits.
