William Letsou, PhD

Principal Investigator

Yutaka Yasui, PhD

Education

SB – University of Chicago (2011)
PhD – California Institute of Technology (2018)

Research Interests

• Genetic basis of breast cancer
• Rare-haplotype effects in genetic association studies
• Pattern mining
• Algorithm--development

Current Research

Most genome-wide association studies test single variants for association with disease. The prevailing hypothesis is that thousands of variants with small effects together add up to a high-risk phenotype.  Yet, after extensive genotyping efforts, much of the genetic basis of common disorders remains unaccounted for. I am investigating whether haplotypes (combinations of variants on the same chromosome) explain additional variability in risk using novel computational algorithms that identify allele patterns likely associated with disease. We are finding evidence that GWAS hits tag common haplotypes, which can further be refined into rare haplotypes with large effect.