DISSERTATION RESEARCH: The Use of Cladistic Techniques to Identify the Genetic Determinants of Phenotypes

American Museum Natural History, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

The application, development and evaluation of tree building techniques, for the detection of genetic associations will be examined. Evaluation of the performance of all techniques developed in this proposal will involve both the identification of significant associations of a trait with allelic variants of candidate genes and with combinations of genetic markers at a genomic level. This proposal expands on nested clade analysis, which is being more commonly implemented in many fields of research. This approach will be critically evaluated under controlled conditions with varying parameters for the first time in the context of identifying genotype/phenotype associations. The results of this project will have broad implications on data analysis and interpretation in the fields of ecology, evolution, developmental biology, genetics, epidemiology and medicine, especially for those studies looking to identify quantitative trait loci. The production and distribution of a computer program implementing this analysis will make it universally available and accessible to researchers in all fields, especially those who are not familiar with the techniques that it implements. Perhaps the greatest intellectual merit is in the establishment of phylogenetic techniques as a reasonable method to evaluate certain types of population data that do not require completely resolved individual relationships.