The Genetics of Complex Traits

Aim

The student will learn and understand the basis of quantitative genetic techniques, in particular how they pertain to the identification of genes underlying complex traits and diseases.

Knowledge and understandingOn completion of the course, the student shall be able to:

• Describe and understand statistical quantitative genetic techniques and how they apply to complex traits.
• Explain the statistical basis of quantitative traits.
• Explain and distinguish between linkage and linkage disequilibrium and their uses.
• Analyse the genetic architecture of different behavioral and disease-related traits.
• Analyse and understand the theory and steps required to identify the genetic components of a quantitative trait.

Skills and abilitiesOn completion of the course, the student shall be able to:

• Apply the correct statistical analyses required for several different real-world quantitative genetic data sets.
• Perform statistical analyses for quantitative trait locus mapping and gene expression analyses and interpret the results.

Judgement ability and approachAfter completion of the course, the student shall be able to:

• Critically assess the types of genomic analyses that are prevalent in current biology and how they are complementary to one another, as well as identify weaknesses within the tools currently available.
• Discuss and theorise around the merits of particular aspects of gene identification and how they interact with one another.

Content

The field of genetics has rapidly developed from the analysis of traits controlled by single genes, with one of the biggest challenges in biology now the analysis of quantitative traits controlled by a large number of separate loci. Such quantitative traits (also called complex traits) now represent the bulk of the phenotypes we wish to elucidate at a genetic level. As this field has risen to greater prominence, the genes that underpin both the mechanisms and variation present in these complex traits are starting to be understood.This course will teach both a combination of the genetic knowledge required to interpret this field, as well as an understanding of how quantitative traits are measured. The course will focus on practical aspects of complex trait genetics, principally the use of statistics and how they are required in the field, experimental design and the like. Aspects as diverse as heritability, genetic mapping, transcriptomics, mutagenesis and transgenics will be covered, whilst a variety of different behaviours and diseases will be looked at and dissected.Students will apply quantitative genetic techniques on real data, discuss the limits of the different techniques they are using, and make comparisons between different techniques. Statistical quantitative genetic analyses will be performed using the R software package.