The Hardy-Weinberg law: state-of-the-art equilibrium test-ing in genetics and applications in microbial ecology

Jan graffelman

Technical University of Catalonia, Department of Statistics and Operations Research, Barcelona, Spain

jan.graffelman@upc.edu

Link to seminar:

The Hardy-Weinberg law is a foundational principle of population genetics. In this seminar we review this principle, with a strong emphasis on the visualisation of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and the statistical procedures involved. Some recent developments and state-of-the art exact equilibrium testing procedures for autosomes and the X-chromosome, with large numbers of polymorphisms, either bi-allelic or multi-allelic, are discussed. 

In the ongoing collaboration of the speaker with Rutger de Wit at UMR MARBEC, it was found that the statistical and visualisation procedures used in genetics find strong application in microbial ecology, where denitrifying bacteria in aquatic sediments studied with N-isotope tracking experiments produce nitrogen compositions according to the Hardy-Weinberg law. In this context, the study of disequilibrium turns out to be crucial, ultimately leading to the modelling and estimation of the relative contributions of denitrification and anaerobic ammonium oxidation to benthic nitrogen production.

Watch previous seminars on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrX4IsZ8WIFcDa0ZmC7rcQg