Seminar
Paul Marjoram
Two Topics From
Computational Biology
The talk consists of two parts. In the first we discuss the development of methodology allowing for inference of population genetics parameters based on resequencing data. We also discuss open questions related to the design of association studies based upon such data. In the second part we introduce a simulation-based approach to inferring characteristics of colorectal tumor growth. The data consists of patterns of methylation status ascertained at a set of loci for each of a number of cells sampled from a given tumor. The patterns of relatedness observed at these methylation sites are used as the basis of an accept/reject algorithm that determines plausible growth models for such tumors. We close by discussing some of the open problems in the application of accept/reject algorithms in such contexts.
