Applications are invited for a fulltime PhD studentship in Statistical Genetics in the Departments of Health Sciences and Genetics at the University of Leicester. This is an exciting cross-disciplinary project involving collaboration with colleagues from computer science (York) and Forensic statistics (Oslo) and will run alongside a Medical Research Council funded grant on related issues. It should thus provide an excellent training for a career in Bioinformatics/Genetic Epidemiology/Biostatistics.
Title: "Relationship identification and error handling in pedigree data"
Supervisors: Nuala Sheehan ([log in to unmask]) and Paul Burton (Health Sciences) and Mark Jobling (Genetics)
Project Description:
It is now well understood that the large population Biobank studies that have been set up worldwide to investigate the genetic risk factors underlying the common complex diseases of major public health concern do not have sufficient statistical power to discover rarer genes with large effects, gene-gene and gene-environment interaction effects and the (common) genes with relatively modest effects. Large consortia are currently being set up to pool these studies in an attempt to increase power. Methods that target the finding of rare variants for common diseases are of particular interest. For this, an appropriate way to increase power is to find sets of relatives as they are more likely to share longer haplotypes around susceptibility loci (as required for homozygosity mapping) and are hence biologically more informative than unrelated 'cases' and 'controls'. We will consider the problem of estimating relationships from genetic marker data. Recent work indicates that we can exploit the ever-increasing availability of genome-wide SNP data but we often need to incorporate additional information such as age, sex, generation gap etc. This project is fully funded by the University of Leicester and will provide the student with an excellent grounding in state-of-the-art developments for statistical methods in genetic applications. Hard-working, independent-minded and enthusiastic students with a strong statistics background who can work well in such a cross-disciplinary environment are encouraged to apply. The project will include a study of genome-wide data available from several datasets including surname-ascertained cohorts of males known to share patrilineal ancestry within the last few centuries.
1) Barrett, JH, Sheehan, NA, Cox, A, Worthington, J, Cannings, C and MD Teare (2007). Family based studies and genetic epidemiology: theory and practice. Human Heredity 64, 146-148.
2) Miyazawa H, Kato M, Awata T, Kohda M, Iwasa H, Koyama N, Tanaka T, Huqun, Kyo S, Okazaki Y, Hagiwara K (2007) Homozygosity haplotype allows a genomewide search for the autosomal segments shared among patients. American Journal of Human Genetics 80: 1090-1110
3) Ø Skare, N Sheehan, and T Egeland. (2009) Identification of distant family relationships. Bioinformatics, 25:2376-2382.
4) Thompson, EA and TR Meagher (1998) Genetic linkage in the estimation of pairwise relationships. Theoretical and Applied Genetics 97, 857-864.
The studentship covers University Tuition/Registration fees at the UK/EU rate and will provide a tax-free stipend at research council rates to the student for 3 to 4 years. Applicants must hold, or expect to obtain, a First Class or Upper Second Class BSc degree or a good MSc degree in a relevant subject. Please note that this particular studentship is a College studentship and is hence open to non-UK/EU nationals. However, an international student would have to pay the difference between international and UK/EU fees.
Further information and application guidelines can be found on the College web site at URL http://www2.le.ac.uk/colleges/medbiopsych/research/studentships,
or the University Graduate School web site at URL http://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/gradschool/finance/funding/scholarships .
The project is listed as a PhD Studentship in Population Research (Reference - MBSP-11-05) on these pages.
Nuala A. Sheehan,
Reader in Statistical Genetics,
University of Leicester,
Department of Health Sciences and Department of Genetics,
2nd Floor Adrian Building,
University Road,
Leicester LE1 7RH, UK
Tel: +44 (0)116 2297271
Fax: +44 (0)116 2297250
Email: [log in to unmask]
https://swww2.le.ac.uk/Members/nas11
http://www2.le.ac.uk/colleges/medbiopsych
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