DNAprint Genomics (DNAG)

[mingwan0]

Here's another population researcher:

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=502369

Published on Thursday, May 06, 2004
Young Profs Net Two Presidential Awards

Two Harvard scientists were among the 57 recipients of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) announced by the White House Tuesday.

Cabot Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology John R. Wakeley and Associate Professor of Psychiatry Dr. William A. Carlezon received the high-profile award.

...

Wakeley, who teaches the graduate seminar Organismic Evolutionary Biology 303, "Theoretical Population Genetics" was one of the 20 PECASE award winners that was nominated by the NSF.

He was recognized for his work on developing new methods for analyzing DNA-sequencing data. These methods will help scientists and mathematicians develop new theories about the genetic histories of populations.

"I am working on models that deal with geographically structured populations," Wakeley said. "These models describe the ancestry or genealogy of a sample of DNA."

Wakeley said that his research has found that the genealogies of more complex populations are mathematically similar to genealogies in unstructured populations.

Here is his website:

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~biophys/John_R_Wakeley.htm

Here is an interesting recent paper from him:

Wakeley J, Lessard S. Theory of the effects of population structure and sampling on patterns of linkage disequilibrium applied to genomic data from humans. Genetics. 2003 Jul;164(3):1043-53.

Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA. [e-mail]

We develop predictions for the correlation of heterozygosity and for linkage disequilibrium between two loci using a simple model of population structure that includes migration among local populations, or demes. We compare the results for a sample of size two from the same deme (a single-deme sample) to those for a sample of size two from two different demes (a scattered sample). The correlation in heterozygosity for a scattered sample is surprisingly insensitive to both the migration rate and the number of demes. In contrast, the correlation in heterozygosity for a single-deme sample is sensitive to both, and the effect of an increase in the number of demes is qualitatively similar to that of a decrease in the migration rate: both increase the correlation in heterozygosity. These same conclusions hold for a commonly used measure of linkage disequilibrium (r(2)). We compare the predictions of the theory to genomic data from humans and show that subdivision might account for a substantial portion of the genetic associations observed within the human genome, even though migration rates among local populations of humans are relatively large. Because correlations due to subdivision rather than to physical linkage can be large even in a single-deme sample, then if long-term migration has been important in shaping patterns of human polymorphism, the common practice of disease mapping using linkage disequilibrium in "isolated" local populations may be subject to error.

Doesn't look too good for DeCode genetics...