Dear all, The next seminar in our series of statistics talks for people interested in quantitative methods in biology and medicine will take place on Thursday 3 April 2014 at 11h00 in the Salle Delachaux (Biopôle 2, premier étage, Route de la Corniche 10, Lausanne, M2: Vennes). The speaker will be Georg B. Ehret (University of Geneva and Center for Complex Disease Genomics, Johns Hopkins University, USA) who will speak about Blood pressure genomics - methods to improve the discovery of blood pressure variants Abstract: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have contributed new knowledge on blood pressure (BP) elevation, a major cardiovascular risk factor: Twenty-nine BP SNPs identified in up to 203,056 individuals (Levy Nature Gen 2009, Newton-Cheh Nature Gen 2009, Ehret Nature 2011) have shown a clinically significant BP effect size, are associated with BP in multiple ethnicities, and predict target organ damage, excepting the kidney. The International Consortium for Blood Pressure Genome-Wide Association Studies and parent- & related consortia have undertaken a number of new analyses, including studies using refined phenotypes, interaction analyses, and studies with larger sample sizes that improve the discovery of BP variants. Hope to see you there! Valentin (for the organizers: Jérôme Goudet, Valentin Rousson, Frédéric Schütz)