Twins Flashcards
When extracting the influence of d on a phenotype what are the mz and dz probabilities? I.e what do you need to multiply the non additive genetic effects by in a path diagram..
Mz =1
DZ = 1/4 (0.25)
What does concordance mean?
The probability that a pair of individuals will both have a certain trait (I.e twins have the same psychopathology)
What is the rule for model identification?
The number of unknown parameters must equal the number of predictive statistics (co variance MZ, covariance DZ, Vp)
What does Vp stand for?
Variance of phenotype
When would you decide to run an ADE model over an ACE model?
When the difference between the mz and dz correlations is more than half the mz correlations (I.e heritability estimates would be greater than the mz correlation -not possible)
(this shows that the effects can not be due to additive genetic influences but must be due to non additive genetic influence)
E.g rMZ = .6
rDZ =.25
What does ‘free’ mean in mx language?
= TRUE or FALSE and it refers to whether we are estimating these parameters or not.
What is a saturated model?
Most basic model to describe the data. It’s a perfectly fitting model as the covariances are treated as free parameters, so that their maximum likelihood estimates will be the sample covariances.
ACE model is compared to the saturated model (is it a better fit of the data or not?)
But there is a lot of noise!
Also used to check assumptions of an ACE model (equality of means, equality of variances, twin specific environment (twin-sib data), sex differences)
To obtain a baseline fit statistic (-2LL)
Explain a variance covariance matrix
The number on the diagonal refers to the variance of each trait and on the off diagonals (symmetrically) is the covariance a (between traits).
What is an identity matrix?
It has 1 on the diagonals and 0 on the off diagonals
Can be used to multiply with other matrices
What can the 2log likelihood do?
Can quantify differences between models with others
How could you tell a saturated model from an ACE model?
In an ACE model the variance for twin 1 and twin 2 will be the same but in a saturated model they are free to vary.
What is R?
R is a a programming language and a software environment
What is open MX?
It is a package in R
What does the library command do?
Makes packages available
The recycling rule means?
Refers to a situation where 2 vectors of different lengths are computed and the shorter vector is repeated until it matches the length of the longer vector.
What is a vector?
A sequence of data elements of the same basic type. Members in a vector are officially called components.
What is a matrix?
A matrix is a collection of data elements arranged in two-dimensional rectangular layout. Data must all be off the same type
What is a data frame?
Is a table, or two-dimensional array-like structure, in which each column contains measurements on one variable and each row contains one case. (A case does not necessarily mean the same as an experimental subject). Data can be of different types.
“a” “b” “c” “d” “e” “f” “g” “h” “I” “j”
What letters does
C(2:5,8) refer to?
What’s does (4:8)
b c d e and h
d e f g h
When indexing how do you drop an element from the analysis? (E.g item 1 in a vector)
Z [-1]
How do you select elements from a vector? (E.g 1 & 4 & 7)
Z[c(1,4,7)]
What does c stand for in r programming language?
Concatenation (combine)
When indexing from a matrix what is the nemonic to help remember the order written or read?
Roman Catholic
rows then columns!
How to define a string variable in r?
Quotation marks
Quantitative genetics is based on what theory?
Biometric all genetic theory
What does quantitative genetics aim to do?
Infer a direct relationship between the observed variance of a trait to unobserved genetic, shared and unique environmental factors
How does quantitative genetics make predictions of the effects of underlying latent factors?
By using the relatedness between individuals (e.g MZ twins are clones of each other and DZ share on average half their segregating genes .5)
What three groups of participants do you get from an adoption design?
Genetic relatives
Environmental relatives
And genetic and environmental relatives
Define non additive genetic effects (dominance and epistaxis)
Dominance is an interaction between alleles at the same locus
Epistasis is an interaction on difference loci.
(Dominance does not contribute to the genetic covariance)
Which part of ACE contains error?
E
What two ways can phenotypic variance be decomposed into?
ACE
ADE
What is falconers formula for the correlations for MZ and DZ twins?
rMZ = A + C
rDZ = .5A + C
What are three assumptions of the twin model?
Equal environments
Genotype- environment effects (Random mating, no gxe interactions and no gxe correlations)
Generalisability
What does path analysis allow us to do?
Represent linear models for the relationship between variables in a diagram.
Makes it easy to derive expectations for the variances and covariance a of variables in terms of the parameters of the proposed linear model.
Also permits easy translation into matrix formulation as used by programs such as mx and open mx