DISSERTATION RESEARCH: The Use of Cladistic Techniques to Identify the Genetic Determinants of Phenotypes

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The application, development and evaluation of tree building techniques, for thedetection of genetic associations will be examined. Evaluation of the performance of alltechniques developed in this proposal will involve both the identification of significantassociations of a trait with allelic variants of candidate genes and with combinations ofgenetic markers at a genomic level. This proposal expands on nested clade analysis,which is being more commonly implemented in many fields of research. This approachwill be critically evaluated under controlled conditions with varying parameters for thefirst time in the context of identifying genotype/phenotype associations. The results ofthis project will have broad implications on data analysis and interpretation in the fieldsof ecology, evolution, developmental biology, genetics, epidemiology and medicine,especially for those studies looking to identify quantitative trait loci. The production anddistribution of a computer program implementing this analysis will make it universallyavailable and accessible to researchers in all fields, especially those who are not familiarwith the techniques that it implements. Perhaps the greatest intellectual merit is in theestablishment of phylogenetic techniques as a reasonable method to evaluate certaintypes of population data that do not require completely resolved individual relationships.