In the last decade rapid development in biotechnologies has made it possible to extract extensive information about practically all levels of biological organization. An ever-increasing number of studies are reporting multilayered datasets on the entire DNA sequence, transcription, protein expression, and metabolite abundance of more and more populations in a multitude of environments.
However, a solid model for including all of this complex information in one analysis, to disentangle genetic variation and the underlying genetic architecture of complex traits and diseases, has not yet been proposed.

During his PhD, Alireza Ehsani introduced a novel way to integrate such huge data sets in an efficient and informative procedure to dissect the complexity of obesity related traits (e.g. body weight, body fat, feed intake, etc). Alireza Ehsani studied DNA variants as well as RNA expression to find the causal regions in the genome for obesity and map the flow from DNA though RNA ending with individual phenotypes.

The PhD degree was completed at Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Science and Technology, Aarhus University.

Time: Thursday 6 June 2013 at 9.00
Place: The Lecture Theatre, Research Centre Foulum, Aarhus University
Title of dissertation: Integrative Genomic Analysis of Complex Traits
Contact information: Ali Reza Ehsani, e-mail: alireza.ehsani@agrsci.dk
Members of the assessment committee:
Professor Chris Haley, MRC Human Genetics Unit, MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine, University of Edinburg, Western General Hospital, UK
Professor Miguel Perez-Enciso, Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG), Facultat de Veterinaria UAB, Campus Universitat Autonoma Barcelona, Spain
Associate Professor Bernt Guldbrandtsen (chair), Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University
Main supervisor:
Centre Director Mogens Sandø Lund, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University
Co-supervisors:
Senior Researcher Guosheng Su, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University
Senior Researcher Luc Janss, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University
Language: The PhD dissertation will be defended in English.

The defence is public.
The dissertation is available for reading at the Graduate School of Science and Technology/GSST, Ny Munkegade 120, building 1521, room 112, 8000 Aarhus C.