MRC INTEGRATIVE EPIDEMIOLOGY UNIT (IEU)
SEMINAR SERIES 

SPECIAL SEMINAR

 Tuesday, 8^th November, 2016
13.00 – 14.00 - Room OS6 – Oakfield House

 David Evans
Professor of Statistical Genetics and Head of Genomic Medicine, University of Queensland Diamantina Institute

 “New Opportunities for Structural Equation Modelling in Genetic Epidemiology”

Abstract

Structural equation modelling (SEM) is a standard method of analysing genetically informative data. Its popularity is due in large part to its flexibility, as well as the availability of several user friendly software packages including LISREL, Mx and most recently, Open Mx. However, within this same community, application of SEM has largely been restricted to heritability, linkage and association analyses. With the advent of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) over the last decade, several new exciting statistical methods involving molecular genetic data have emerged including G-REML (genetic restricted maximum likelihood analysis), which uses GWAS data to model genetic similarity between unrelated individuals and from this estimate genetic variance components and parameters, and Mendelian randomization (MR), a technique that uses genetic variants from GWAS as instrumental variables to estimate putative causal relationships between phenotypic traits. In this presentation, I show how G-REML and MR can be performed in the structural equation modelling framework. In particular, I show how recent developments in the open Mx software package mean that not only can large scale SEMs be fitted using existing software, but also models that are more complicated and address more interesting questions that would be challenging or impossible to fit using other software packages/methods. I illustrate these newer generations of models using recent research from my group involving data from the UK Biobank Study and other large scale data resources.

David M Evans1,2

1 University of Queensland Diamantina Institute, Translational Research Institute, University of Queensland

2 MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, School of Social and Community Medicine, University of Bristol

Biography

David Evans is Professor of Statistical Genetics and Head of Genomic Medicine at the University of Queensland Diamantina Institute. He completed his PhD in Statistical Genetics at the University of Queensland in 2003, before undertaking a four year post-doctoral fellowship at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford where he worked as part of the The International HapMap Consortium and co-led the analysis of four diseases within the first Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium. In 2007 he moved to take up a Senior Lecturer then Reader position at the University of Bristol where he worked on genome-wide association studies work in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. In 2013 he returned to take up his current position at the University of Queensland where he is an Australian Future Fellow and continues to lead an MRC Programme in bone genetics at the University of Bristol where he spends some of his year. His research interests include the genetic mapping of complex traits and diseases and the development of statistical methodologies in genetic epidemiology including approaches for gene mapping, individual risk prediction, causal modelling and dissecting the genetic architecture of complex traits. On weekends he likes to surf and is enjoying the temperature difference between Queensland waters and the northern coast of Devon.

ALL WELCOME