Seminars
To receive Biostatistics seminar email announcements, send a blank email to BIOSTATEVENTS-subscribe-request@ITSSRV1.UCSF.EDU.
Seminars marked "Research Program" are informal discussions of research by UCSF faculty. For more information, contact John Neuhaus.
The CAPS Method Core Quantitative Methods Working Group also presents seminars of interest to statisticians.
September 17, 2008
Jeff Wall
Institute for Human Genetics and Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, UCSF
INFERENCE OF HUMAN DEMOGRAPHIC HISTORY FROM SEQUENCE POLYMORPHISM DATA
We describe new methods for estimating human demographic parameters from DNA sequence polymorphism data and apply these methods to sequence data from 222 genes (Environmental Genome Project) and 90 non-coding regions. While many of our results are similar to those of previous studies, one finding was quite unexpected: we find much more genetic variation on the X chromosome (compared to the autosomes) than expected. We review possible explanations for this pattern and suggest that the most likely one is some degree of polygyny throughout most of human history.
October 15, 2008
Haiyan Huang
Department of Statistics, UC Berkeley