scholarly journals Test Gene-Environment Interactions for Multiple Traits in Sequencing Association Studies

2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 170-196
Author(s):  
Jianjun Zhang ◽  
Qiuying Sha ◽  
Han Hao ◽  
Shuanglin Zhang ◽  
Xiaoyi Raymond Gao ◽  
...  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianjun Zhang ◽  
Qiuying Sha ◽  
Han Hao ◽  
Shuanglin Zhang ◽  
Xiaoyi Raymond Gao ◽  
...  

AbstractThe risk of many complex diseases is determined by a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors. Data on multiple traits is often collected for many complex diseases in order to obtain a better understanding of the diseases. Examination of gene-environment interactions (GxEs) for multiple traits can yield valuable insights about the etiology of the disease and increase power in detecting disease associated genes. Most existing methods focus on testing gene-environment interaction (GxE) for a single trait. In this study, we develop novel approaches to test GxEs for multiple traits in sequencing association studies. We first perform transformation of multiple traits by using either principle component analysis or standardization analysis. Then, we detect the effect of GxE for each transferred phenotypic trait using novel proposed tests: testing the effect of an optimallyweighted combination of GxE (TOW-GE) and/or variable weight TOW-GE (VW-TOW-GE). Finally, we employ the Fisher’s combination test to combine the p-values of TOW-GE and/or VW-TOW-GE. Extensive simulation studies based on the Genetic Analysis Workshop 17 data show that the type I error rates of the proposed methods are well controlled. Compared to the existing interaction sequence kernel association test (ISKAT), TOW-GE is more powerful when there are only rare risk and protective variants; VW-TOW-GE is more powerful when there are both rare and common risk and protective variants. Both TOW-GE and VW-TOW-GE are robust to directions of effects of causal GxEs. Application to the COPDGene Study demonstrates that our proposed methods are very powerful.


Author(s):  
Andrey Ziyatdinov ◽  
Jihye Kim ◽  
Dmitry Prokopenko ◽  
Florian Privé ◽  
Fabien Laporte ◽  
...  

Abstract The effective sample size (ESS) is a metric used to summarize in a single term the amount of correlation in a sample. It is of particular interest when predicting the statistical power of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) based on linear mixed models. Here, we introduce an analytical form of the ESS for mixed-model GWAS of quantitative traits and relate it to empirical estimators recently proposed. Using our framework, we derived approximations of the ESS for analyses of related and unrelated samples and for both marginal genetic and gene-environment interaction tests. We conducted simulations to validate our approximations and to provide a quantitative perspective on the statistical power of various scenarios, including power loss due to family relatedness and power gains due to conditioning on the polygenic signal. Our analyses also demonstrate that the power of gene-environment interaction GWAS in related individuals strongly depends on the family structure and exposure distribution. Finally, we performed a series of mixed-model GWAS on data from the UK Biobank and confirmed the simulation results. We notably found that the expected power drop due to family relatedness in the UK Biobank is negligible.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chao-Yu Guo ◽  
Reng-Hong Wang ◽  
Hsin-Chou Yang

AbstractAfter the genome-wide association studies (GWAS) era, whole-genome sequencing is highly engaged in identifying the association of complex traits with rare variations. A score-based variance-component test has been proposed to identify common and rare genetic variants associated with complex traits while quickly adjusting for covariates. Such kernel score statistic allows for familial dependencies and adjusts for random confounding effects. However, the etiology of complex traits may involve the effects of genetic and environmental factors and the complex interactions between genes and the environment. Therefore, in this research, a novel method is proposed to detect gene and gene-environment interactions in a complex family-based association study with various correlated structures. We also developed an R function for the Fast Gene-Environment Sequence Kernel Association Test (FGE-SKAT), which is freely available as supplementary material for easy GWAS implementation to unveil such family-based joint effects. Simulation studies confirmed the validity of the new strategy and the superior statistical power. The FGE-SKAT was applied to the whole genome sequence data provided by Genetic Analysis Workshop 18 (GAW18) and discovered concordant and discordant regions compared to the methods without considering gene by environment interactions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilo Broc ◽  
Therese Truong ◽  
Benoit Liquet

Abstract Background The increasing number of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) has revealed several loci that are associated to multiple distinct phenotypes, suggesting the existence of pleiotropic effects. Highlighting these cross-phenotype genetic associations could help to identify and understand common biological mechanisms underlying some diseases. Common approaches test the association between genetic variants and multiple traits at the SNP level. In this paper, we propose a novel gene- and a pathway-level approach in the case where several independent GWAS on independent traits are available. The method is based on a generalization of the sparse group Partial Least Squares (sgPLS) to take into account groups of variables, and a Lasso penalization that links all independent data sets. This method, called joint-sgPLS, is able to convincingly detect signal at the variable level and at the group level. Results Our method has the advantage to propose a global readable model while coping with the architecture of data. It can outperform traditional methods and provides a wider insight in terms of a priori information. We compared the performance of the proposed method to other benchmark methods on simulated data and gave an example of application on real data with the aim to highlight common susceptibility variants to breast and thyroid cancers. Conclusion The joint-sgPLS shows interesting properties for detecting a signal. As an extension of the PLS, the method is suited for data with a large number of variables. The choice of Lasso penalization copes with architectures of groups of variables and observations sets. Furthermore, although the method has been applied to a genetic study, its formulation is adapted to any data with high number of variables and an exposed a priori architecture in other application fields.


Author(s):  
Mohamed Abdulkadir ◽  
Dongmei Yu ◽  
Lisa Osiecki ◽  
Robert A. King ◽  
Thomas V. Fernandez ◽  
...  

AbstractTourette syndrome (TS) is a neuropsychiatric disorder with involvement of genetic and environmental factors. We investigated genetic loci previously implicated in Tourette syndrome and associated disorders in interaction with pre- and perinatal adversity in relation to tic severity using a case-only (N = 518) design. We assessed 98 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) selected from (I) top SNPs from genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of TS; (II) top SNPs from GWASs of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and autism spectrum disorder (ASD); (III) SNPs previously implicated in candidate-gene studies of TS; (IV) SNPs previously implicated in OCD or ASD; and (V) tagging SNPs in neurotransmitter-related candidate genes. Linear regression models were used to examine the main effects of the SNPs on tic severity, and the interaction effect of these SNPs with a cumulative pre- and perinatal adversity score. Replication was sought for SNPs that met the threshold of significance (after correcting for multiple testing) in a replication sample (N = 678). One SNP (rs7123010), previously implicated in a TS meta-analysis, was significantly related to higher tic severity. We found a gene–environment interaction for rs6539267, another top TS GWAS SNP. These findings were not independently replicated. Our study highlights the future potential of TS GWAS top hits in gene–environment studies.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. e0124967 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chin Lin ◽  
Chi-Ming Chu ◽  
John Lin ◽  
Hsin-Yi Yang ◽  
Sui-Lung Su

2010 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 364-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn C. Cornelis ◽  
Arpana Agrawal ◽  
John W. Cole ◽  
Nadia N. Hansel ◽  
Kathleen C. Barnes ◽  
...  

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 564-566 ◽  
Author(s):  
PROTON RAHMAN

Psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis (PsA) are heterogeneous diseases. While both have a strong genetic basis, it is strongest for PsA, where fewer investigators are studying its genetics. Over the last year the number of independent genetic loci associated with psoriasis has substantially increased, mostly due to completion of multiple genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in psoriasis. At least 2 GWAS efforts are now under way in PsA to identify novel genes in this disease; a metaanalysis of genome-wide scans and further studies must follow to examine the genetics of disease expression, epistatic interaction, and gene-environment interaction. In the long term, it is anticipated that genome-wide sequencing is likely to generate another wave of novel genes in PsA. At the annual meeting of the Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA) in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2009, members discussed issues and challenges regarding the advancement of the genetics of PsA; results of those discussions are summarized here.


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