viii
Preface
population structure. While understanding human population structure is valuable in
itself, it is vital to properly design association studies for complex traits. In Chap.
4, Enard provides an introduction to natural selection in humans and contemporary
statistical methods used to detect positive selection.
Chapters 5–7 discuss medical genetic and association studies between genetic
variants and complex traits. In Chap. 5, Graff and Witte discuss statistical methods
used to associate genetic variants with complex phenotypes. This chapter provides
an introduction to genome-wide association studies (GWAS) which have become a
mainstay in human genetics. In Chap. 6, Thompson describes an exciting approach
of using identity by descent (IBD) mapping for implicating genetic variants in
disease risk. In Chap. 7, Voight provides a summary of some of the lessons that
the human genetics community has learned from the early GWAS.
Lastly, Chaps. 8 and 9 provide an overview of human evolutionary genetics.
In Chap. 8, Wall summarizes what we have learned about human history for the
analysis of genome-wide genetic variation data. In Chap. 9, Emery and Akey
provide an overview of what we have learned about how natural selection has shaped
genetic variation across the human genome. They discuss some specific examples
of human adaptations and what these selection scans tell us about human evolution.
We wish to thank the authors of these chapters as well as the editors at Springer
for their continued patience with us. This project took nearly a decade to complete,
and we are grateful for their support and helping us eventually complete the book.
Los Angeles, CA
Kirk E. Lohmueller
Berkeley, CA
Rasmus Nielsen
May 2020
Preface
population structure. While understanding human population structure is valuable in
itself, it is vital to properly design association studies for complex traits. In Chap.
4, Enard provides an introduction to natural selection in humans and contemporary
statistical methods used to detect positive selection.
Chapters 5–7 discuss medical genetic and association studies between genetic
variants and complex traits. In Chap. 5, Graff and Witte discuss statistical methods
used to associate genetic variants with complex phenotypes. This chapter provides
an introduction to genome-wide association studies (GWAS) which have become a
mainstay in human genetics. In Chap. 6, Thompson describes an exciting approach
of using identity by descent (IBD) mapping for implicating genetic variants in
disease risk. In Chap. 7, Voight provides a summary of some of the lessons that
the human genetics community has learned from the early GWAS.
Lastly, Chaps. 8 and 9 provide an overview of human evolutionary genetics.
In Chap. 8, Wall summarizes what we have learned about human history for the
analysis of genome-wide genetic variation data. In Chap. 9, Emery and Akey
provide an overview of what we have learned about how natural selection has shaped
genetic variation across the human genome. They discuss some specific examples
of human adaptations and what these selection scans tell us about human evolution.
We wish to thank the authors of these chapters as well as the editors at Springer
for their continued patience with us. This project took nearly a decade to complete,
and we are grateful for their support and helping us eventually complete the book.
Los Angeles, CA
Kirk E. Lohmueller
Berkeley, CA
Rasmus Nielsen
May 2020