Science at the Shine Dome 2010

New Fellows Seminar

Wednesday 5 May

Professor Peter Visscher FAA
Queensland Statistical Genetics, Queensland Institute of Medical Research

Peter Visscher was born in the Netherlands. His undergraduate degree was in animal science and he moved to Edinburgh in 1987 for an MSc and subsequent PhD in animal breeding and genetics, working on the estimation of genetic parameters in large livestock pedigrees. A postdoctoral period in Melbourne was followed by a return to Edinburgh, where he developed methods to map genetic loci underlying complex traits. In 1995 he moved to a faculty position at the University of Edinburgh, developing gene mapping methods and software tools, with practical applications in livestock and human populations. Peter joined the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in 2005 and leads the Queensland Statistical Genetics Laboratory. He has an honorary professorial appointment at the University of Queensland, and adjunct professorships at the Queensland University of Technology and Griffith University. He is a senior principal research fellow of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council.

The genetic basis of quantitative traits

Both Darwin and Mendel observed differences between individuals across a wide variety of traits and species and realised that some or most of those differences were passed on from parents to progeny. Subsequent mathematical and statistical theoretical research in the first half of the twentieth century demonstrated that family resemblance for traits such as height in humans are compatible with Mendelian genetics, if such ‘complex’ quantitative traits are the result of a combination of multiple genes and environmental effects. The genetics of quantitative traits and also common disease have been studied using concepts that refer to the combined effect of all genes (the heritability), by drawing inference from the observed phenotypic correlations of relatives while recognising that relatives share environmental experiences as well as genes. To understand genetic variation in populations we would like to know how many genes are involved, what their frequency is in the population and how they act together. The development of DNA marker technology has facilitated research to answer these fundamental questions in genetics and biology. We have applied these technologies, in combination with novel analytical methods, to height in human populations and show how familial resemblance can be broken down into the action of individual gene variants at many locations in the genome. This work impacts on our understanding of the evolution and genetics of all complex traits and diseases.