Abstract
Guy Sella presented mathematical models for interpreting the results of human genome-wide association studies (GWAS). These studies reveal the genetic architecture of anthropomorphic and biomedical traits. What remains to be understood is how genetic architecture emerges from genetic and evolutionary processes, notably mutation, natural selection and genetic drift. Guy Sella presented his model of the genetic architecture of a one-dimensional focal trait subject to stabilizing selection in a multi-dimensional trait space. These results provide an interpretation of the empirical GWAS results and predict that the distribution of genetic variances by site among the loci identified in GWAS is well approximated by a simple functional form that depends on a single parameter : the expected contribution to genetic variance of a highly selected site affecting the trait.
