biology

Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium

Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium rather than just read about it. In short: The Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (abbreviated WTCCC) is a collaboration between fifty research groups in the United Kingdom in the field of human genetics. Established in 2005, the WTCCC aims to conduct genome-wide association studies (GWASs) to shed light on the genetic architecture of common human diseases.

Key takeaways

Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (abbreviated WTCCC) is a collaboration between fifty research groups in the United Kingdom in the field of human genetics. Established in 2005, the WTCCC aims to conduct genome-wide association studies (GWASs) to shed light on the genetic architecture of common human diseases. The founding chairman of the consortium was University of Oxford statistician Peter Donnelly. The consortium was funded by £9 million from the Wellcome Trust. According to the consortium's website, it has identified "approximately 90" new susceptibility loci for common human diseases. The consortium's initial goal was to conduct large GWASs for eight common human diseases: tuberculosis, coronary heart disease, type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, bipolar disorder and hypertension. These GWASs included a total of 19,000 subjects, of whom 2,000 had one of the eight diseases and an additional 3,000 served as controls. The study participants were genotyped using Affymetrix's GeneChip Human Mapping 500K Array Set, and genotype calling was conducted with the Chiamo algorithm. The results of the WTCCC's initial research were reported in Nature in 2007. The research identified 24 genetic association "signals" that were statistically significant at P < 5 × 10−7. At the time, this was the largest study ever conducted of the genetics of human diseases. In announcing the study's findings at a London news conference, Donnelly said, "If you think of the genome as a very long road that you are trying to find your way along in the dark, previously we have only been able to turn lights on in a small number of places, but now we can turn on lights in a large number of places— in this case half a million lights". The 2007 Nature paper was later named "paper of the year" by the Lancet, and it led to the WTCCC being named "research leader of the year" by Scientific American.

References

External links Official website

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium

In research: Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2005 establishments in England, Consortia in the United Kingdom, Genetic epidemiology, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium in simple terms?

Why does Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium.