Title: Ridge regression based hybrid genetic algorithms for multi-locus quantitative trait mapping

Authors: Bin Zhang, Steve Horvath

Addresses: Departments of Human Genetics and Biostatistics, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095 7088, USA. ' Departments of Human Genetics and Biostatistics, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095 7088, USA

Abstract: Genetic algorithms (GAs) are increasingly used in large and complex optimisation problems. Here we use GAs to optimise fitness functions related to ridge regression, which is a classical statistical procedure for dealing with a large number of features in a multivariable, linear regression setting. The algorithm avoids overfitting, gracefully handles collinearity and leads to easily interpretable results. We use the method to model the relationship between a quantitative trait and genetic markers in a mouse cross involving 69 F2 mice. The approach will be useful in the context of many genomic data sets where the number of features far exceeds the number of observations and where features can be highly correlated.

Keywords: genetic algorithms; ridge regression; quantitative trait mapping; gene interactions; bioinformatics; genetic markers; mice; genomic data sets; linear regression modelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBRA.2005.007905

International Journal of Bioinformatics Research and Applications, 2005 Vol.1 No.3, pp.261 - 272

Published online: 30 Sep 2005 *

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