> ******* UCL STATISTICS SEMINAR ****************
>
> All are welcome
>
> Please see our web page for details of further seminars and how to find
> us:
www.ucl.ac.uk/stats/research/journals.html
> Monday 6th November 2000 - 4pm, Room 102, 1-19 Torrington Place,
> Department of Statistical Science - University College London.
>
Speaker: Scott Pletcher, UCL
"Statistical models for estimating the genetic basis of repeated
measures and other function-valued traits"
The quantitative genetic analysis of biological traits that are best
considered as functions of some independent and continuous variable,
such as age, can be a complicated matter, and a simple and efficient
procedure is desirable. I develop the character process model, which
describes a variety of parametric models for genetic and non-genetic
covariance functions. These models are compared and contrasted to
alternative approaches suggested previously in the literature. In
addition, I propose a framework for the development and specification of
models for a quantitative genetic analysis of function-valued characters
that are not directly observed, such as genetic variation in
age-specific mortality rates or complex threshold characters. The
specification of these generalized models can be obtained using a hybrid
Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm involving a Markov Chain Monte Carlo
EM algorithm coupled with a Monte Carlo approximation to the likelihood.
The methods are applied to a range of simulated data and to a large data
set measuring age-specific mortality and reproductive rates in the fruit
fly, Drosophila melanogaster.
Dr Andrew Copas
Lecturer in Medical Statistics
Departments of Statistical Science & Sexually Transmitted Diseases
University College London
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