Date & Time: Thursday, Nov. 5, 2009 4:00 PM
Location: 33-105 Center for the Health Sciences

 ABSTRACT: Due to the ease of accessibility, samples of European individuals have been some of the most carefully genetically characterized samples throughout the world and arguably across any species. Despite the intensive attention given to these populations, basic questions still remain unanswered regarding what the dominant patterns are and what ancestral events explain them. Part of the confusion has been due to how statistical methods have been applied to emerging data sets. In particular, non-model based methods, in particular principal components analysis (PCA), have played an important role in how genetic data from these populations have been interpreted. In this talk, I will review recent advances in the theoretical understanding of how PCA behaves under various population genetic assumptions, including under range expansion models where the “allele surfing” phenomenon appears to produce surprising results. In addition, I will review recent insights from large-scale single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) datasets, including how samples from various presumed population isolates (French Basque, Sardinian, Sorbs, Orcadian, and Adygei) fit into the context of broader European genetic diversity.

Host: Dr. Van Savage (vsavage@ucla.edu)       To receive e-mail seminar notices, contact David Tomita (dtomita@biomath.ucla.edu)