Understanding Rare-Variant Relationships by Gabriela Gonzalez ’24

Understanding Rare-Variant Relationships Through Extensions of Mixed-Effects Models and Score Tests, by Gabriela Gonzalez ’24, Wednesday December 6, 1:10 – 1:50pm, North Science Building 015, Wachenheim

Abstract: Many genome-wide association studies (GWAS) were originally focused on studying common variants in genes because these variants were thought to, in large part, lead to common illnesses. However, modern hypotheses suggest that rare variants make larger contributions to the heritability of many traits and diseases. In this talk, I will explore one mixed-effects model and combined score test that is meant to improve the power for detecting rare-variant associations with phenotypes. Does this new method evaluate rare-variant relationships to a higher degree than previous models, and what are the important details that you need to know?