Title:  The Genetic Architecture of Complex Phenotypes: New Insight from Game Theory

Speaker： Prof. Rongling Wu
                    Pennsylvania State University; Beijing Forestry University

Address： Rm 102, East wing of Old Chemistry Building, Peking Unversity 

Chair：  Prof. Minghua Deng,  Center for Quantitative Biology 

Abtract:

      Despite their paramount importance to life sciences, our understanding of quantitatively inherited traits has been largely limited by the complexity of their underlying genetic and physiological mechanisms. In this talk, I present a new theory for mapping complex traits by integrating game theory into the statistical framework of genetic association studies. In nature, the development of any trait is never an isolated process, rather than it encompasses a web of interactions between its internal components and external interfaces through Darwinian natural selection. This universal principle, quantified by game theory, is utilized and incorporated to identify causal intermediate pathways between genotype and phenotype. The game-based mapping strategy established by a group of differential equations breaks through traditional ways to dissect trait phenotypes which do not take account into the ecological and evolutionary underpinnings. The new strategy can not only map quantitative traits more precisely and more efficiently, but also provide an unprecedented tool to study the genetic control of biological processes in evolutionary, ecological and biomedical studies.