Genetic Data Analysis. Methods for Discrete Population Genetic Data

Sunderland

1990

377 S.

Serie

0-87893-872-9

12817

400090826

This book describes methods for the statistical analysis of discrete population genetic data. Such data are generally counts, whether of genotypes or of base types, and I have omitted all mention of quantitative genetic data that result from measurement of genetic traits such as height or yield. Population geneticists are now facing the exciting task of interpreting new kinds of genetic data and it seems timely to review some of the statistical techniques appropriate for restriction fragment length polymorphisms and DNA sequences. I hope that this book shows, however, that even new data can be handled with the techniques developed in the early studies of R.A. Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane and Sewall Wright and extended by many workers since then. It is my hope that this treatment will bridge the gap between the excellent treatment, 20 years ago, of Regina Elandt-Johnson in her Probability Models and Statistical Methods in Genetics and the current literature in scientific journals. I have tried to give a wide coverage, and have referred where appropriate to more specialized books. For example, the reader may want to read Jurg Ott's Analysis of Human Genetic Linkage for details on estimating linkage, especially in humans, and Masatoshi Nei's Moleculr Evollutionary Genetics for a comprehensive treatment of molecular genetic data. This book is intended to be a guide to methods for traditional analyses of Hardy-Weinberg and linkage disequilibrium and to methods for characterizing population structure and estimating genetic distance. It also introduces the reader to some of the many methods of constructing evolutionary trees and to the difficult problems of aligning and comparing sequences.