Neil Risch - Population Genetics

Population Genetics

Risch has condicted significant work on the nature of human differences on a geographical scale. For instance, he used social and genetic data to analyse genetic admixture from White, African, and Native American ancestry in Puerto-Rico, as well as relating this to geographical variation in Social status

Risch considers that genetic drift is a more compelling explanation for the carrier frequency of lysosomal storage diseases in Ashkenazi Jews than heterozygote advantage, in light of analysis of the results of recent genetic testing by his collaborators and himself.

After mapping torsion dystonia by linkage disequilibrium (LD) analysis he found it was genetically dominant and was a founder mutation. Other work has focused on the genetic basis of Parkinson's disease, hemochromatosis, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, autism, epilepsy and hypertension.