Quantitative genetics

Research

Medical Genetics has been in the forefront of so-called new biology. The flood of information produced by genome projects requires the utilization of wide variety of specialists and skills. An enormous amount of data has been already created and to really take advantage of it, a great challenge is to develop biostatistics and bioinformatics. Only then can the research be targeted strategically wisely.

Our greatest interest is directed towards complex disease genetics, or lately, rather towards multifactorial quantitative traits as such. We apply several research strategies targeted to find genetic components of complex traits. Large family materials enable the determination of heritability and later, by linkage analysis, show us the chromosomal locations of putative genetic variants behind the traits inherited component. To replicate the findings and to pinpoint the actual variants it is necessary to use large replication materials, both families and cohorts, as well as the un-prejudiced utilization of new methods. Utilizing biostatistical tools we pool together genome scans to study intermediate phenotypes, usually quantitative variables. We will target our gene localization efforts on the chromosomal regions linked to these traits by combining our skills in bioinformatics, biostatistics, medicine and molecular genetics. We are very interested in the genetics of common traits such as stature, and we have published one of the first genome-wide QTL-studies performed on humans. We are in close collaboration in Finland for example with groups from Universities of Helsinki, Tampere, Kuopio, Turku and Oulu as well as with HIIT (Helsinki Institute for Information Technology).

Research group

Katriina Heikkilä
Kirsi Auro
Kaisu Keskitalo
Antti Knaapila
Johannes Kettunen
Katja Tuononen
Ani Englund
Anni Joensuu
Perttu Salo
Annaliisa Valtimo
Niina Pellikka

Additional information