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Report of the Anthropology / Human Genetic Diversity Component May 31, 2002 Dear Colleagues, We hope that you have all returned safely from Seattle, and that you found the Workshop and Congress to be both stimulating and fruitful. We were pleased to meet those of you who were able to attend the meetings, and have returned with renewed enthusiasm for our work. It seems clear that there is still quite a bit to be done. In this update, we hope to summarize our plans for the rest of the year as we prepare for the publication of "HLA 2002: Immunobiology of the Human MHC", the compilation and summary of the Workshop and Congress. Thank You for a Successful Workshop We think that the Victoria Workshop meeting was an informative and enjoyable experience, and we know that it would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication that all project participants have shown over the last two years. In particular we would like to thank Derek Middleton, Teodorica Bugawan, Milena Ivanova, Zulay Layrisse, Alicia Sanchez-Mazas and Antonio Arnaiz-Villena for their presentations in the Anthropology Working Group sessions. Thank you all! In additon, we would like to thank Mark Stoneking for speaking at both the Anthropology Symposium and the first Working Group session, as well as for his contributions to the ensuing Working Group discusssion. We especially appreciate the contributions of Alicia Sanchez-Mazas and David Gjertson for generously providing us with genotype data from the 12th Workshop. Finally, we would like to welcome Alicia as a member of the Anthropology Team. In addition to providing access to 12th Workshop genotype data, Alicia presented her geo-linguistic analyses of the combined 12th and 13th Workshop datasets as a part of the workshop, and will continue to work closely with us over the course of the next year. Her addition to our team is particularly exciting. Summer-Fall 2002 Timeline With the workshop behind us, the next project milestone is the publication of HLA 2002 at the end of the year. Toward this end, we need to review and revise the raw data and preliminary analyses, re-analyze the entire dataset and carry out new meta-analyzes, and prepare all of this work for publication. The IHWG organizers have set a deadline of mid-October for us to complete these tasks, so time is of the essence in meeting the subordinate goals. Based on the feedback we obtained in the workshop sessions and the meetings that we held with individual laboratories, we have outlined these subordinate goals as follows. June - July 1: Review of Workshop Data and Analyses by Submitting Laboratories: Approximately two-thirds of the population datasets that were submitted in 2001 have been analyzed to date, and the results of these analyses have been distributed to the submitting laboratories. We would like to get a response from each participating lab regarding these workshop analyses by the end of June. Even if the analyses look fine and there is nothing amiss with the data, we would appreciate it if you would let us know, so that we can be confident that each lab has reviewed their analyses. Starting in June, we will be distributing the raw data that were used to generate these pre-workshop analyses to each submitting lab for review. These workshop datasets will be free of allele and genotype ambiguities (reduced to the best of our ability), but it seems likely that there will be cases where the submitting lab has more information on the identity of certain alleles than was available to us, where data has been omitted or duplicated, or where related individuals or population subsets need to be excluded from analysis. As with the review of data analyses, it is important that each lab respond when they have reviewed their data, weather the data need be revised or not. In addition, we will begin to contact project participants to obtain background and demographic data for each population at this time. Unless we receive information otherwise, all datasets and data analyses that were presented at the Victoria Workshop will be considered finalized and ready for inclusion in HLA 2002 after July 1. Finally, we will be using feedback received at the workshop to revise and update the documentation for the preliminary analyses available on the IHWG website. July - September 1 : Data Processing and Analyses of Post-Workshop Data and Analyses In addition to the population datasets that were analyzed as a part of the 13th Workshop meeting, there are a number of datasets that were either submitted in 2002, or that were not analyzed in time for the May meeting. Working with the biostatistisc core, we intend to process and analyze these post-workshop datasets over the course of the next several months, and distribute the raw data and preliminary analysis (deviation from Hardy-Weinberg expectations, allele counts and haplotype frequency estimates) files to the submitting labs for review. In this time, we also intend to incorporate and analyze the changes and revisions recommended by participants in their review of Workshop data and analyses and in their meetings with us at the Workshop. July - October 1 : Review of Post-Workshop Data and Analyses by Submitting Laboratories As in the review of the workshop data and analyses, we need feedback from each laboratory with regards to the accuracy of their data. Because of the obvious time constraints, we hope that each lab will be able to review and return comments on these post-workshop data sets and analyses within one month of our having distributed them. Unless we receive information to the contrary, we will consider these datasets and analyses finalized one month after they have been distributed. June - September 1 : Submission of Short Papers by Submitting Laboratories We feel that each submitting laboratory should be considered to be the authority on their particular population samples, and with this principle in mind, we would like each laboratory group to write a short paper for inclusion in HLA 2002, describing their population, the results of the preliminary analyses and interpretations of these analyses for their populations. Each of these will be incorporated into the HLA 2002 as part of a reference chapter on each population and the associated data analysis. Sections of these short papers will also serve as reference materials for the curation of these population data when they are deposited into the dbMHC. August - October 1: Meta-analyses and Drafts of HLA 2002 Chapters With the data reviewed by each laboratory, the Biostatistics Core will be able to proceed with meta-analyses. These will include serological-level analyses of the data, where feasible. These meta-analyses will be compiled in a separate chapter of HLA 2002. September - October : Editing of the Anthropology Section of HLA 2002 We hope to have a completed draft of the Anthropology Component section of HLA 2002 ready to be distributed to project participants for review by mid September. In order to have the finalized manuscript ready by mid October, we will need all comments back from project participants by October 1. We realize that this is a very tight schedule and that the next five months will be quite busy. Hopefully, the energy and enthusiasm from the Victoria Workshop will carry us through to the end of the year. The 14th Workshop The 14th International Histocompatibility Workshop and Congress will be held in Australia in 2005, and will focus on the completion of the work begun as a part of the 13th Workshop. We hope that you will all continue to work as a part of the IHWG to this next workshop and beyond. Please let us know if you have any questions about the timeline or the 14th Workshop. We appreciate all of your hard work and support. With Best Regards, Henry Erlich, Steve Mack, Alicia Sanchez-Mazas and Andrea Jani Anthropology / Human Genetic Diversity Component |