Stephen Leslie
Dr Stephen Leslie
Postdoctoral Researcher
+44 (0) 1865 272 860 (Dept)
+44 (0) 1865 281 228 (Direct)
+44 (0)1 865 272595 (Fax)
Biographical Sketch
Biographical Sketch: I am currently a post-doc working with Professor Gil McVean in the Mathematical Genetics Group. I obtained my bachelors degree from the Australian National University in pure mathematics. My honours dissertation was on a topic in functional analysis. I subsequently switched my focus to mathematical genetics and obtained my D.Phil. from the University of Oxford under the supervision of Professor Peter Donnelly. My thesis was on detecting population structure from tightly linked SNP data and predicting HLA alleles using SNPs. I am a member of Worcester College.
Research interests
Research interests: Population Genetics, Statistical Models, Understanding Patterns of Variation in the MHC.
My main interest is in developing and fitting models for population genetic data. In particular I am interested in learning about the effect of HLA allelic variation on the progression and outcomes of diseases. Obtaining good data on HLA types has historically been very expensive and well-powered studies on HLA associations to disease status have been limited by the cost of such typing. To overcome this problem I have developed a method for determining HLA allelic types (to 2- or 4-digit accuracy) based on SNP data from the MHC region. Such data is relatively inexpensive to obtain and the method has proved to be successful at predicting HLA types for both class I and class II genes using this data. I am presently further refining this method.
I am also interested in detecting and understanding spatial variation in genetic data, and understanding the consequences of such spatial variation for population genetic analyses. I am currently working on these problems in the context of human/ malaria coevolution.
Selected Publications
Leslie, S; Donnelly, P and McVean, G (2008) A Statistical Method for Predicting Classical HLA Alleles from SNP Data. The American Journal of Human Genetics 82: 48-56.
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