Seminar Notice

Statistical Laboratory
Iowa State University

DATE AND TIME: Monday, April 25, 2005, 4:00 p.m.

PLACE: 319 Snedecor

SPEAKER: Jason Fine, Department of Statistics and Department of Biostatistics & Medical Information, University of Wisconsin-Madison

TITLE:  Analysis of Semiparametric Mixture Models with Application to QTL Analysis


ABSTRACT


In this talk, we propose a semiparametric alternative to traditional parametric QTL interval mapping.  Our model assumes that the log ratio of the component densities satisfies a linear model, with the baseline density unspecified.  We begin by considering the simple case of single gene model in backcross, with two component mixtures.  We show that a constrained empirical likelihood has an irregularity when the two densities are equal.  A partial empirical likelihood is proposed, which permits unconstrained estimation of the parameters and gives consistent and asymptotically normal estimators.  It turns out that the partial empirical likelihood is related to a conditional likelihood involving additional nuisance parameters.  We establish that the partial likelihood estimator is more efficient than an estimator with the nuisance parameters known.  The practical utility of the methods is illustrated on a rat study of breast cancer resistance genes.  The approach is then extended to intercross designs and multiple gene models.  The exponential tilt formulation unifies standard parametric multigene models, including epistasis.  Robustness of the conditional/partial likelihoods to selective genotyping/phenotyping is discussed and a general resampling technique is described for whole genome scans.  Analysis of a rat experiment of listeria infection will be presented, where segregation distortion leads to different results compared to standard parametric QTL analysis.

COFFEE:    3:30 p.m., 104 Snedecor Hall

Seminar schedules and abstracts are available via WWW: http://www.stat.iastate.edu/


Jeanette La Grange
Department of Statistics
102 Snedecor
Iowa State University
Ames, IA  50010-1210
515 294-3440 (office)
515 294-4040 (fax)
http://www.stat.iastate.edu/directory/staff/jeanette.html