Two new chapters from my open-access textbook in human population genetics are now online:
- Population structure: I. Ancestry estimation
- Population structure: II. More about admixture
web.stanford.edu/group/pritchar…

Very sad news. Such a clear thinker. Darwin's Dangerous Idea ranks alongside The Extended Phenotype as essential reading for anyone interested in evolution. And Consciousness Explained remains the most coherent discussion of that topic that I have read.

New preprint! 'Dissecting Schizophrenia Biology Using Pleiotropy with Cognitive Genomics' - tweetorial to follow from Max Lam
medrxiv.org/content/10.110…

Our decade-long search for the genetic traces of the earliest Indo-Europeans has culminated in the two preprints we are releasing today!

With Nick Patterson, David Anthony, and 91 co-authors, on 'The Genetic Origin of the Indo-Europeans'

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

Very excited that the latest from the PGC Consortium PTSD group is now out in Nature Genetics!

Headline: 95 loci implicated with PTSD, now in the rapid-discovery phase of psychiatric GWAS.

nature.com/articles/s4158…

Thread and ReadCube link to follow

So as Carl Veller & I discuss in our article, while within family-study effect-size estimates for single SNPs are interpretable, the interpretation of the within-family regression of trait value on PGS is more challenging due to confounding.

Thanks to Alexander Strudwick Young for this useful commentary on our paper. As Alex’s piece highlights, family studies are a great way forward. But as he also notes, one issue is that confounding (e.g. AM or env) can be baked into the polygenic scores that are subsequently used within-fam

Carl Veller Graham Coop PLOS Biology Primer: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ar…

Paper by Carl Veller and Graham Coop: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ar…

To accompany Carl Veller and Graham Coop's recent article in PLOS Biology, I wrote an accessible primer on family-based genome-wide association studies:

Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) can be affected by confounding. Family-based GWAS uses random, within-family genetic…

Next stop, family focused biobanks
'We should consider building family-based sampling (ideally representative of the population) into the design of future biobanks to enable powerful and robust FGWAS and other family-based methodologies.'

Great Primer 👇
journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ar…

This has long been a pet peeve of mine. Unless you are using a family-based design, you can’t claim genetic instruments are independent “because Mendel.” Mendel’s laws don’t make population stratification disappear. Particularly an issue for behavioral exposures.

#GWAS can be affected by confounding; Alexander Strudwick Young explores a Carl Veller Graham Coop #PLOSBiology study which asks how different sources of confounding affect GWASs & whether family-based designs offer a solution. Primer plos.io/3UeYyfC Paper plos.io/3Qmu2hF

Happy to share paper

Efficient storage and regression computation for population-scale genome sequencing studies

biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

#GWAS can be affected by confounding; Alexander Strudwick Young explores a Carl Veller Graham Coop #PLOSBiology study which asks how different sources of confounding affect GWASs & whether family-based designs offer a solution. Primer plos.io/3UeYyfC Paper plos.io/3Qmu2hF

This new genetic history of the modern strawberry is remarkable. I had no idea all of today's strawberries descend from an accidental cross in the gardens of Versailles 300 yrs ago--or the wild stuff modern breeders did in the '70s. nature.com/articles/s4146…

Genetic variation is relatively poorly studied in the Middle East, particularly where endogamy and consanguinity are more common. Among 6K WGS in Qatar, 2 in 3 (!) was a carrier for a pathogenic mutation for an autosomal recessive condition. link.springer.com/article/10.118……

Congratulations to Carl Veller on the publication of his article on confounding in population and family GWAS PLOS Biology

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ar…

Major news on the use of polygenic scores to optimise healthcare in the US 👇👇👇

Very important that the arrangement respects participant privacy (excerpt from Mass Mutual press release) massmutual.com/about-us/news-…