Genetics of complex traits: Prediction of phenotype, identification of causal polymorphisms and genetic architecture

Abstract

Complex or quantitative traits are important in medicine, agriculture and evolution, yet, until recently, few of the polymorphisms that cause variation in these traits were known. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS), based on the ability to assay thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), have revolutionized our understanding of the genetics of complex traits. We advocate the analysis of GWAS data by a statistical method that fits all SNP effects simultaneously, assuming that these effects are drawn from a prior distribution.We illustrate how this method can be used to predict future phenotypes, to map and identify the causal mutations, and to study the genetic architecture of c..