Program | Registration | Organizers | Sponsors | ICSB2010 | Poster | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The successes, challenges and prospects for next generation GWAS analyses for complex diseasesEdinburgh, UK, 15. Oct. 2010*UPDATE* Note that the workshop is in the Informatics Forum ( 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB ), not the main ICSB venue.Purpose of the workshopGenome-wide association studies (GWAS) have become the method of choice for studying disease etiology with an increasing number of GWAS studies reporting progress towards uncovering the genetic markers for complex diseases such as schizophrenia1. This workshop is aimed at introducing an interdisciplinary audience to the concept and practice of GWAS. It will cover the fundamental assumptions, showcase recent successes and discuss limitations of current GWAS approaches in the field of complex diseases. It will provide a stage for shaping the next generation of GWAS by drawing on the audience's interdisciplinary expertise in statistics and machine learning to overcome present challenges and identify the most promising avenues of future research. BackgroundGWAS has been enabled by three major advances in human genetics: the publication of the human genome, the characterisation of common human genetic variation by the International HapMap Project, and the development of SNP arrays that enable reliable and affordable screening of up to 1 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) simultaneously. Advances in statistical methods to identify disease-associated genetic variants without bias have also been important. Despite the success for some diseases where SNPs identified by GWAS explain a substantial fraction of the genetic risk (e.g. age-related macular degeneration), for other complex diseases such as schizophrenia, the SNPs reported using current GWAS methods explain only a small proportion of the observed heritability. Recent studies hint that this "missing/hiding" heritability may be explained by hundreds or thousands of common small effect variants, in addition to a large number of rare large effect variants. Only a small fraction of this variation is likely to be tagged by the current generation of SNP arrays; future GWAS will involve a combination of next generation SNP arrays (containing 5 million or more SNPs) and whole genome sequencing. Identifying novel risk factors from such data will entail formidable challenges, not only because of the sheer quantity of variation, but because of complexity arising from allelic and locus heterogeneity, dosage and timing of gene expression, epistasis and epigenetic effects. Machine learning algorithms, particularly those recently developed, hold great promise for the analysis of multidimensional GWAS data, but their potential has yet to be fully explored. This workshop will consider how existing statistical and machine learning methods can be integrated in novel ways that advance the study of the genetic basis of complex disease. Audience and OutcomeBy bringing together researchers with an interest in augmenting GWAS with novel statistical approaches and machine learning technologies to study the etiology of complex diseases such as schizophrenia, the workshop aims to bridge the gap between statistics, bioinformatics and genetics. We envisage that researchers in machine learning and statistics who have an interest in complex disease genetics, as well as statistical geneticists looking for improved tools for GWAS will gain from participating in this workshop.
ProgramThe program with more information about the speakers can be downloaded.
Details of invited speakersBryan J. Mowry (University of Queensland, Brisbane,
AU) confirmed Additional informationPlease note that this workshop is not overlapping but following the World Congress on Psychiatric Genetics (3-7. Oct 2010) http://www.ispg2010.org/ RegistrationThe online registration has now closed. The registration on the day of the workshop will be at the workshop venue, Informatics Forum (10 Crichton Street Edinburgh EH8 9AB), from 8:30 am.View ICSC GWAS Workshop in a larger map OrganizersProf. Bryan Mowry Dr. Denis Bauer Dr. Jake Gratten Sponsors
PosterThe advertising poster is available here. Last modified: Thu Oct 14 11:25:02 BST 2010 |
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