New review paper on GWAS

Comput Struct Biotechnol J. 2015 Nov 23;14:28-34
Uncovering the Genetic Architectures of Quantitative Traits.
Lee JJ, Vattikuti S, Chow CC.

Abstract
The aim of a genome-wide association study (GWAS) is to identify loci in the human genome affecting a phenotype of interest. This review summarizes some recent work on conceptual and methodological aspects of GWAS. The average effect of gene substitution at a given causal site in the genome is the key estimand in GWAS, and we argue for its fundamental importance. Implicit in the definition of average effect is a linear model relating genotype to phenotype. The fraction of the phenotypic variance ascribable to polymorphic sites with nonzero average effects in this linear model is called the heritability, and we describe methods for estimating this quantity from GWAS data. Finally, we show that the theory of compressed sensing can be used to provide a sharp estimate of the sample size required to identify essentially all sites contributing to the heritability of a given phenotype.
KEYWORDS:
Average effect of gene substitution; Compressed sensing; GWAS; Heritability; Population genetics; Quantitative genetics; Review; Statistical genetics

Selection of the week

The first movement of Beethoven’s Violin and Piano Sonata No.5, Op. 24, dubbed the Spring Sonata, played by Gidon Kremer and Martha Argerich. I was fortunate enough to attend a concert by Kremer in the 1980’s. I don’t think I really understood what great musicianship was, as opposed to virtuosity, until that concert.  For Kremer, every note is part of a bigger whole. In this video, it is not clear that Kremer and Argerich are on the same page though.

Below is the whole thing with Anne Sophie Mutter and Lambert Orkis, which has better balance.

Selection of the week

The great Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter playing Beethoven’s last piano sonata, No. 32 in C minor, Op 111, which really pushed the boundaries of music at that time. Beethoven was completely deaf when he composed it. Richter was considered to be a musical genius; he was admired by Glenn Gould. Richter also insisted that American pianist Van Cliburn should be the winner of the first International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow in 1958. It was a controversial decision to say the least but Richter prevailed and that moment still resonates both musically and and geopolitically. It certainly launched Cliburn’s career and one could argue that it laid a path to the end of the cold war. Music can matter.

Franz de Waal

Another brilliant op-ed by Franz de Waal in the Times.

How to be a scientific dilettante

I have worked in a lot of disparate fields from plasma physics, to nonlinear dynamics, to posture control, to neuroscience, to inflammation, to obesity, to gene transcription, and population genetics. I have had a lot of fun doing this but I definitely do not recommend it as a career path for a young person. I may have gotten away with it but I was really lucky and it certainly carried a cost. First of all, by working in so many fields, I definitely lack the deep knowledge that specialists have. Thus, I don’t always see the big picture and am often a step behind others. Secondly, while I am pretty well cited, my citations are diluted over multiple fields. Thus, while my total H index (number of papers where number of citations exceeds rank) is pretty decent, my H index in each given field is relatively small. I thus do not have much impact in any given area. To be taken seriously as a scientist, one must be a world expert in something. The system is highly nonlinear; being pretty good in a lot of things is much worse than being really good in one thing. There is a threshold for relevance and if you don’t cross it then it is like you don’t exist.

However, if you do want to work in a lot of fields, the worse thing to do is to say, “Hey I really find field X to be interesting so I’m just going to read some books and papers on it and try to do something.” I have reviewed quite a few papers, where some mathematician or physicist has read some popular science book or newspaper article on the topic and then tried to publish a paper on a problem mentioned in the book. I then have to tell them to read up on four decades of previous work first, and then resubmit. The way I have managed to meander through multiple fields is that someone will either contact me directly about some specific question or mention something to me either in a casual setting or at a conference. I could not possibly have made any progress at all if I didn’t have great collaborators who really knew the field and the literature. Still, people constantly ask me if I still work in neuroscience, to which I can only respond “Just because you don’t cite me doesn’t mean I don’t publish!”

 

Selection of the week

The second movement of Franz Schubert’s Trio No. 2 in E flat, op. 100 played by le Trio Wanderer.  This piece (or rather a small fraction of it) was popularized by the film Barry Lyndon.

Here is the whole thing played by Trio Cleonice