Pariya Behrouzi

• Professor (Assistant) at Wageningen University & Research

Telomere length has been related to human health and ageing in multiple studies. However, these studies have analyzed a small set of variables, according to pre-formulated hypotheses. We used data from NHANES 1999-2002 to perform a preregistered cross-sectional analysis. From these four years we selected the participants with available leukocyte te...

Over the last ten years, global raspberry production has increased by 47.89%, based mainly on the red raspberry species (Rubus idaeus). However, the black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis), although less consumed, is resistant to one of the most important diseases for the crop, the late leaf rust caused by Acculeastrum americanum fungus. In this conte...

This contribution introduces a novel statistical learning methodology based on the Bradley-Terry method for pairwise comparisons, where the novelty arises from the method's capacity to estimate the worth of objects for a primary attribute by incorporating data of secondary attributes. These attributes are properties on which objects are evaluated i...

The statistical modelling of ranking data has a long history and encompasses various perspectives on how observed rankings arise. One of the most common models, the Plackett-Luce model, is frequently used to aggregate rankings from multiple rankers into a single ranking that corresponds to the underlying quality of the ranked objects. Given that ra...

Background Heterogeneity in ageing rates drives the need for research into lifestyle secrets of successful agers. Biological age, predicted by epigenetic clocks, has been shown to be a more reliable measure of ageing than chronological age. Dietary habits are known to affect the ageing process. However, much remains to be learnt about specific diet...

In recent years, the availability of multi-omics data has increased substantially. Multi-omics data integration methods mainly aim to leverage different molecular data sets to gain a complete molecular description of biological processes. An attractive integration approach is the reconstruction of multi-omics networks. However, the development of e...

Over the last ten years, global raspberry production has increased by 47.89%, based mainly on the red species ( Rubus idaeus ). However, the black raspberry species ( Rubus occidentalis ), although less consumed, is resistant to one of the most important diseases for the crop, the late leaf rust caused by the Acculeastrum americanum fungus, to whic...

Within the statistical literature, there is a lack of methods that allow for asymmetric multivariate spatial effects to model relations underlying complex spatial phenomena. Intercropping is one such phenomenon. In this ancient agricultural practice multiple crop species or varieties are cultivated together in close proximity and are subject to mut...

Improving crop yields is one of the main goals of agronomy. However, yield is determined by a complex interplay between Genotypic, Environmental and Management factors (G × E × M) that varies across time and space. Therefore, identifying the fundamental relations underlying yield variation is a principal aim of agricultural research. A narrow, and...

The root system architecture of a plant changes during salt stress exposure. Different accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana have adopted different strategies in remodelling their root architecture during salt stress. Salt induces a multiphase growth response in roots, consisting of a stop phase, quiescent phase, recovery phase and eventually a new le...

During salt stress, the root system architecture of a plant is important for survival. Different accessions of Arabidopsis thaliana have adopted different strategies in remodeling their root architecture during salt stress. Salt induces a multiphase growth response in roots, consisting of a stop phase, quiescent phase, recovery phase and eventually...

This article proposes a graphical model that can handle mixed-type, multi-group data. The motivation for such a model originates from real-world observational data, which often contain groups of samples obtained under heterogeneous conditions in space and time, potentially resulting in differences in network structure among groups. Therefore, the i...

Metagenomics combined with high-resolution sequencing techniques have enabled researchers to study the genomes of entire microbial communities. Unraveling interactions between these communities is of vital importance to understand how microbes influence human health and disease. However, learning these interactions from microbiome data is challengi...

Genetic variance of a phenotypic trait can originate from direct genetic effects, or from indirect effects, i.e. through genetic effects on other traits, affecting the trait of interest. This distinction is often of great importance, for example when trying to improve crop yield and simultaneously controlling plant height. As suggested by Sewall Wr...

Background: In nutritional epidemiology, dealing with confounding and complex internutrient relations are major challenges. An often-used approach is dietary pattern analyses, such as principal component analysis, to deal with internutrient correlations, and to more closely resemble the true way nutrients are consumed. However, despite these impro...

Functional relationships between phenotypic traits can be represented by structural equation models (SEMs), as proposed by Sewall Wright in 1921. Extended with genetic effects, SEMs can distinguish between direct and indirect genetic contributions to phenotypic traits. For example, given a causal effect of trait Y1 on Y2, the genetic variance of Y2...

This paper introduces sparse dynamic chain graph models for network inference in high dimensional non-Gaussian time series data. The proposed method parametrized by a precision matrix that encodes the intra time-slice conditional independence among variables at a fixed time point, and an autoregressive coefficient that contains dynamic conditional...

Motivation: Linkage maps are used to identify the location of genes responsible for traits and diseases. New sequencing techniques have created opportunities to substantially increase the density of genetic markers. Such revolutionary advances in technology have given rise to new challenges, such as creating high-density linkage maps. Current mult...

Graphical models provide powerful tools to model and make the statistical inference regarding complex relationships among variables in multivariate data. They are widely used in statistics and machine learning particularly to analyze biological networks. In this paper, we introduce the R package netgwas which is designed for accomplishing three imp...

Linkage maps are used to identify the location of genes responsible for traits and diseases. New sequencing techniques have created opportunities to substantially increase the density of genetic markers. Such revolutionary advances in technology have given rise to new challenges, such as creating high-density linkage maps. Current multiple testing...

Graphical models are a powerful tool in modelling and analysing complex biological associations in high-dimensional data. The R-package netgwas implements the recent methodological development on copula graphical models to (i) construct linkage maps, (ii) infer linkage disequilibrium networks from genotype data, and (iii) detect high-dimensional ge...

Recombinant Inbred Lines derived from divergent parental lines can display extensive segregation distortion and long-range linkage disequilibrium (LD) between distant loci. These genomic signatures are consistent with epistatic selection during inbreeding. Epistatic interactions affect growth and fertility traits or even cause complete lethality. D...