Identifying disease genes is an important step towards effective treatment of human disease. Efforts to identify human disease genes are both cursed and blessed by the existence of population structure, which can lead to false disease associations in some disease mapping approaches but actually drives the existence of others. This research proposal aims to alleviate these curses and harness these blessings.
The first aim i s to improve upon existing methods to correct whole-genome haplotype association studies for population stratification, i.e. systematic ancestry differences between cases and controls, which is a significant source of false disease associations.
The second aim i s to apply whole-genome ancestry association mapping to Latino populations; the focus will be on type II diabetes, which is particularly prevalent in Native Americans and may thus induce an elevated proportion of Native American ancestry in Latinos with type II diabetes near a disease gene.
The third aim i s to develop a method for whole-genome natural selection mapping which harnesses the differentiation between sampled populations to identify genes under recent natural selection, which are strong candidates for relevance to disease. ? ? ?

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK)
Type
Postdoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F32)
Project #
5F32DK076277-02
Application #
7241479
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZRG1-F08-G (20))
Program Officer
Hyde, James F
Project Start
2006-06-01
Project End
2009-05-31
Budget Start
2007-06-01
Budget End
2008-05-31
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2007
Total Cost
$58,886
Indirect Cost
Name
Harvard University
Department
Genetics
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
047006379
City
Boston
State
MA
Country
United States
Zip Code
02115