Human Evolutionary and Statistical Genetics LabComputational Methods for Population History and Complex Disease
NEWSFunding
Dr. Kai Yuan has received the independent R00 phase of his NIH Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institute of Mental Health. The project, "Whole chromosome fine-mapping integrating diverse ancestries for psychiatric disorders," will support the development of statistical methods that leverage diverse ancestries to improve fine-mapping and genetic discovery for psychiatric disorders.
Publication
A new collaborative study has been published in Nature Genetics. The work introduces Tractor-Mix, a statistical framework for genome-wide association studies in admixed cohorts with high degrees of relatedness, improving the discovery of ancestry-specific genetic signals. Dr. Kai Yuan served as a co-author on this study.
Funding
The Human Evolutionary and Statistical Genetics (HESG) Lab has received support from the Indiana University School of Medicine through the Strategic Research Initiative (SRI). This institutional investment will help establish the laboratory and accelerate the development of statistical and computational methods for human genetics, population genetics, and complex disease research.
We are grateful to the Indiana University School of Medicine for its confidence in our research vision and look forward to building a collaborative research program at IU.
Publication
Our latest work, HiMWA, has been published in Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics. HiMWA introduces a hierarchical multiple-wave admixture model that reconstructs realistic population admixture histories by jointly modeling ancient hierarchical admixture and recent multiple waves of gene flow. Applied to Central Asian populations, the method revealed a shared layered demographic history and provides a powerful new framework for studying complex human admixture histories. Dr. Kai Yuan served as a co-corresponding author on this study.
Lab
The Human Evolutionary and Statistical Genetics Lab is being established in the Department of Medical and Molecular Genetics and the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.
Contact
Indiana University School of Medicine