American Statistical Association New York City Metropolitan Area Chapter Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Biostatistics Seminar

Complex diseases have a heterogeneous etiology. The presence of risk alleles in multiple genetic loci affects the function of a variety of intermediate biological mechanisms, resulting in the overt expression of disease. Hence, there is an increasing focus on identifying the genetic basis of diseases by systematically studying phenotypic traits pertaining to specific biological mechanisms or pathways. Recent developments in biological sciences enable simultaneous measurement of multiple phenotypes at the molecular level such as gene or protein expressions. Since genotyping and/or phenotyping may be expensive, the investigator is often faced with the following questions: "Who do we study?" (sampling issue) and "How do we genotype?" (a genotyping issue). This talk examines these issues in the context of identifying genetic loci related to a single measured phenotypic trait in experimental crosses such as mice. Time permitting, some preliminary thoughts and results for analyzing multiple phenotypes will be outlined.