COLLOQUIUM
Department of Mathematics
A Model for Functional Genome-wide Association Studies of
Dynamic Traits
Professor Rongling Wu
Professor and Director of the Center for Statistical Genetics
Pennsylvania State University
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
3:00 – 4:00 pm, refreshments start at 2:30 pm
Rhodes Tower (RT) Room 502
Abstract:
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are powerful for identifying the genetic and environmental etiology
of a trait, but they face a tremendous challenge in handling dynamic or longitudinal features of phenotypic traits
measured repeatedly in time or space. In this talk, I will describe a novel statistical approach, called functional
GWAS or fGWAS, to analyze the genetic control of longitudinal traits. A key benefit of fGWAS is the
incorporation of biological principles for trait changes into the analytical framework of association studies
through mathematical and statistical models. Because of its biological relevance, fGWAS can address many
fundamental questions, such as the patterns of genetic control over development, the duration of genetic effects,
as well as what causes developmental trajectories to change or stop changing. From a statistical perspective,
fGWAS displays increased power for gene detection by capitalizing on cumulative phenotypic variation in a
longitudinal trait over time and increased robustness for manipulating sparse longitudinal data.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Rongling Wu received his Ph.D. degree in Quantitative Genetics from the University of Washington in
1995. Dr. Wu was a faculty of the Department of Statistics at the University of Florida from 2000 through 2008
before he joined to Pennsylvania State University. Currently, he is a Professor of the Departments of Statistics
and Public Health Sciences, and the Director of Center for Statistical Genetics at Pennsylvania State University.
Dr. Wu serves as Editor-in-Chief for Recent Patents on Biotechnology, Guest Editor for Journal of
Biopharmaceutical Statistics, Managing Editor for Frontiers in BioSciences, Co-Editor for Sankhya (an official
journal of The Indian Statistical Institute), Associate Editor for Theoretical Biology and Medical Modeling,
Agronomy Journal, Molecular Pain, and Journal of Probability and Statistics, and Editorial Advisory Board for
BMC Genetics, Recent Patents on Nanotchnology, and Recent Patents on DNA & Gene Sequences. Recently,
Dr. Wu received the prestigious Changjiang Scholars Award by the Ministry of Education of China for his
significant achievements in statistical genetics.