Statistical Methods for Discovering Ribonucleic acids (RNAs) contributing to human diseases and phenotypes

It is becoming increasingly apparent that non-protein-coding RNAs play an important role in the aetiology of many complex genetic diseases and quantitative phenotypes, perhaps as or even more important than proteins. This project will explore new bioinformatics methods for discovering and identifying such RNAs in the human genome. A significant innovation will be integration of data for individuals (genotypes, measurements, affectedness status) with comparative genomics data (multiple sequence alignments and conservation profiles) to accumulate evidence for RNA roles in disease. The project will also develop advanced new statistical methods for more sensitive genetic linkage and association studies and new models for RNA sequence evolution.