Biostatistics Core
The Biostatistics and Bioinformatics Core of the Longevity Consortium (LC) will provide oversight and infrastructure for statistical methodology development, bioinformatics applications, computational biology, and population genetic aspects of the research proposed by LC investigators. Members of the BBC will also oversee the data analysis efforts at the various participating institutions. The BBC will consist of 18 Members (3 UCSD researchers operating the Core and 15 researchers at other instititons participating in the LC). These numbers will likely grow as the LC matures. Dr. Schork will direct the BBC from UCSD. Monthly conference calls, yearly meetings, web-site constructions, and special visits by BBC members to specific sites, will be used to engage LC researchers in BBC efforts (and vice-versa) over-and-above the normal scientific exchange of LC investigators. The BBC will in particular pursue data analysis methodology development research, and provide analysis support, for bioinformatic analyses related to sequencing and polymorphism studies; in silico modeling of the impact of sequence variation on protein structure; association study data analyses, including haplotype, epistatic interaction, and multivariate genetic analyses; and population genetic assays.
The BBC will oversee the design and implementation of both the choice of markers for genotyping as well as the actual data analyses for assessing the genetic demography, potential cryptic stratification, and admixture of the human study participants. This large effort devoted to sorting out the genetic demography of the study subjects will be pursued in an effort identify sources of variation contributing to lifespan and to avoid false-positive and false-negative association study results. Aspects of the BBC research have been incorporated into the individual LC research proposals in addition to the Administrative and Genomics Cores.