After their inauguration in July, 1987, in Leuven, Belgium, these workshops have been held three times more in Leuven, once in Helsinki, and six times at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics, Boulder, Colorado. Each has been tremendously successful (and oversubscribed). Papers resulting from the inaugural workshop were published in a Special Issue of Behavior Genetics: Twin methodology using LISREL, 19(1), 1989. The course material from the previous workshops has been published as a methodology handbook by Neale, M. C., Cardon, L. R., & 11 contributing authors as Methodology for Genetic Studies of Twins and Families, Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Press, 1992.
The next workshop will be held again in Boulder, Colorado, the second week of March 1999, with John Hewitt as local host. Some of the application programming will be based on the package, Mx, developed by Dr. Mike Neale for the flexible analysis of genetically informative data. The Mx home page is at http://griffin.vcu.edu/mx.
This advanced course is intended for those who have attended earlier workshops and who are already familiar with the statistical and genetic principles of univariate and simple multivariate analyses with sibling data, who are familiar with the Mx program, and who have an interest in QTL analysis in the context of twin and sibling data.
The registration fee will be $300.00, payable by January 10, 1999. Accommodations are being reserved at the Regal Harvest House, Boulder. Details of local arrangements, registration, and accommodation are available from the workshop secretary, Carol Case. A home page is being established on the World Wide Web at http://ibgwww.colorado.edu/twins99.
The provisional faculty roster includes:
| L. Eaves [Academic Director], H. Maes, M. Neale | Richmond, VA, USA |
| A. Heath, J. Rice | St. Louis, MO, USA |
| N. Martin, D. Duffy | Brisbane, Queensland, Australia |
| D. Boomsma, C. Dolan | Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
| J. Hewitt, S. Cherny, J. Lessem | Boulder, CO, USA |
The course will include: Use of twins in genetic analysis; basic statistical principles of linkage analysis; identity by descent and genetic covariance; estimating IBD from marker data; sib-pair methods for QTL detection; multivariate analysis, multilocus analysis, association and linkage in variance components analyses; ascertainment and selection of samples; experimental power and study design; and advanced topics in twin and family analysis. Hands-on analysis will be emphasized employing networked terminals.
An application form can be printed from http://ibgwww.colorado.edu/twins99/registration.html. A provisional schedule will be available at http://ibgwww.colorado.edu/twins99/schedule.html. Further information may be obtained from John Hewitt, or the workshop secretary, Carol Case, IBG, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0447, USA; Telephone: 303/492-7363; FAX: 303/492-8063; E-mail: John.Hewitt@Colorado.edu, or Carol.Case@Colorado.edu.
Financial support for this workshop is provided by grant MH19918 from the National Institute of Mental Health.