Tuesday, November 6, 2007 - 9:30 AM
177-1

Genetic and Statiscal Aspects of Association Mapping.

Chengsong Zhu, Guannan Sun, and Jianming Yu. Kansas State University, 2004 Throckmorton Plant Science Center, Manhattan, KS 66506-5501

Association mapping holds great promise for the dissection of complex traits. Besides its technical merits, association mapping is one of few strategies that utilize in large scale the high throughput genomic technologies in sequencing and genotyping and the natural genetic diversity. Although appropriate methods have recently been developed for mapping with diverse germplasm, a thorough understanding of the genetic and statistical properties of association mapping requires further study. We first review the current status of association mapping in crops and other model species. Then we introduce a new likelihood based statistics to quantify the amount genetic variation accounted for by population structure and relatedness. Results from information-driven method development with data in multiple species and with computer simulations will be presented.