Activity in this laboratory proceeds on three main lines: 1) Theoretical modeling, which is mostly designed to help us in our analysis of patterns of human genetic variation in space and time. We extend our interest to models of cultural transmission and variation, which are of greater importance in man than in any other organism, and which have direct and indirect consequences at the level of the geography of genes. 2) Numerical data analysis. We have set up methods for construction of gene frequency maps using available gene frequency data. In addition to maps of single alleles, we have found it useful to construct """"""""synthetic"""""""" maps based on principal components or discriminant functions of as many alleles as possible. These are of considerable help in exploring the importance of historical and prehistorical migrations and also of natural selection. 3) Population data. We want to continue studying new markers that we generate in the laboratory on a set of representative populations. In a separate research project we plan to find new polymorphisms with restriction enzymes and with monoclonal antibodies and test them for segregation and linkage on a limited number of families, but have no provision for ethnic study. In the present project, we plan to use the reagents and probes thus produced to study the ethnic distribution of these new markers.
