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Trastulla L, Dolgalev G, Moser S, Jiménez-Barrón LT, Andlauer TFM, von Scheidt M, Budde M, Heilbronner U, Papiol S, Teumer A, Homuth G, Völzke H, Dörr M, Falkai P, Schulze TG, Gagneur J, Iorio F, Müller-Myhsok B, Schunkert H, Ziller MJ. Distinct genetic liability profiles define clinically relevant patient strata across common diseases. Nat Commun 2024; 15:5534. [PMID: 38951512 PMCID: PMC11217418 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-49338-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/20/2024] [Accepted: 05/31/2024] [Indexed: 07/03/2024] Open
Abstract
Stratified medicine holds great promise to tailor treatment to the needs of individual patients. While genetics holds great potential to aid patient stratification, it remains a major challenge to operationalize complex genetic risk factor profiles to deconstruct clinical heterogeneity. Contemporary approaches to this problem rely on polygenic risk scores (PRS), which provide only limited clinical utility and lack a clear biological foundation. To overcome these limitations, we develop the CASTom-iGEx approach to stratify individuals based on the aggregated impact of their genetic risk factor profiles on tissue specific gene expression levels. The paradigmatic application of this approach to coronary artery disease or schizophrenia patient cohorts identified diverse strata or biotypes. These biotypes are characterized by distinct endophenotype profiles as well as clinical parameters and are fundamentally distinct from PRS based groupings. In stark contrast to the latter, the CASTom-iGEx strategy discovers biologically meaningful and clinically actionable patient subgroups, where complex genetic liabilities are not randomly distributed across individuals but rather converge onto distinct disease relevant biological processes. These results support the notion of different patient biotypes characterized by partially distinct pathomechanisms. Thus, the universally applicable approach presented here has the potential to constitute an important component of future personalized medicine paradigms.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lucia Trastulla
- Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany
- Technische Universität München Medical Graduate Center Experimental Medicine, Munich, Germany
- Human Technopole, Milan, Italy
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Münster, Münster, Germany
| | - Georgii Dolgalev
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Münster, Münster, Germany
| | - Sylvain Moser
- Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany
- Technische Universität München Medical Graduate Center Experimental Medicine, Munich, Germany
- International Max Planck Research School for Translational Psychiatry (IMPRS-TP), Munich, Germany
| | - Laura T Jiménez-Barrón
- Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany
- International Max Planck Research School for Translational Psychiatry (IMPRS-TP), Munich, Germany
| | - Till F M Andlauer
- Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany
- Department of Neurology, Klinikum rechts der Isar, School of Medicine, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
| | - Moritz von Scheidt
- Klinik für Herz-und Kreislauferkrankungen, Deutsches Herzzentrum München, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany
- German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), Partner Site Munich Heart Alliance, Munich, Germany
| | - Monika Budde
- Institute of Psychiatric Phenomics and Genomics (IPPG), LMU University Hospital, LMU Munich, Munich, 80336, Germany
| | - Urs Heilbronner
- Institute of Psychiatric Phenomics and Genomics (IPPG), LMU University Hospital, LMU Munich, Munich, 80336, Germany
| | - Sergi Papiol
- Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany
- Institute of Psychiatric Phenomics and Genomics (IPPG), LMU University Hospital, LMU Munich, Munich, 80336, Germany
| | - Alexander Teumer
- German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), Partner Site Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
| | - Georg Homuth
- Interfaculty Institute for Genetics and Functional Genomics, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
| | - Henry Völzke
- German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), Partner Site Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
- Institute of Community Medicine, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
| | - Marcus Dörr
- German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), Partner Site Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
- Department of Internal Medicine B, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
| | - Peter Falkai
- Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Munich, 80336, Germany
| | - Thomas G Schulze
- Institute of Psychiatric Phenomics and Genomics (IPPG), LMU University Hospital, LMU Munich, Munich, 80336, Germany
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, SUNY Upstate Medical University, Syracuse, NY, USA
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
| | - Julien Gagneur
- School of Computation, Information and Technology, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany
- Institute of Human Genetics, School of Medicine and Health, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
- Computational Health Center, Helmholtz Center Munich, Neuherberg, Germany
| | | | - Bertram Müller-Myhsok
- Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany
- Institute of Translational Medicine, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
| | - Heribert Schunkert
- Klinik für Herz-und Kreislauferkrankungen, Deutsches Herzzentrum München, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany
- German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), Partner Site Munich Heart Alliance, Munich, Germany
| | - Michael J Ziller
- Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany.
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.
- Center for Soft Nanoscience, University of Münster, Münster, Germany.
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Gao G, McClellan J, Barbeira AN, Fiorica PN, Li JL, Mu Z, Olopade OI, Huo D, Im HK. A multi-tissue, splicing-based joint transcriptome-wide association study identifies susceptibility genes for breast cancer. Am J Hum Genet 2024; 111:1100-1113. [PMID: 38733992 PMCID: PMC11179262 DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2024.04.010] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/09/2023] [Revised: 04/13/2024] [Accepted: 04/15/2024] [Indexed: 05/13/2024] Open
Abstract
Splicing-based transcriptome-wide association studies (splicing-TWASs) of breast cancer have the potential to identify susceptibility genes. However, existing splicing-TWASs test the association of individual excised introns in breast tissue only and thus have limited power to detect susceptibility genes. In this study, we performed a multi-tissue joint splicing-TWAS that integrated splicing-TWAS signals of multiple excised introns in each gene across 11 tissues that are potentially relevant to breast cancer risk. We utilized summary statistics from a meta-analysis that combined genome-wide association study (GWAS) results of 424,650 women of European ancestry. Splicing-level prediction models were trained in GTEx (v.8) data. We identified 240 genes by the multi-tissue joint splicing-TWAS at the Bonferroni-corrected significance level; in the tissue-specific splicing-TWAS that combined TWAS signals of excised introns in genes in breast tissue only, we identified nine additional significant genes. Of these 249 genes, 88 genes in 62 loci have not been reported by previous TWASs, and 17 genes in seven loci are at least 1 Mb away from published GWAS index variants. By comparing the results of our splicing-TWASs with previous gene-expression-based TWASs that used the same summary statistics and expression prediction models trained in the same reference panel, we found that 110 genes in 70 loci that are identified only by the splicing-TWASs. Our results showed that for many genes, expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) did not show a significant impact on breast cancer risk, whereas splicing quantitative trait loci (sQTL) showed a strong impact through intron excision events.
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Affiliation(s)
- Guimin Gao
- Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
| | - Julian McClellan
- Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
| | - Alvaro N Barbeira
- Section of Genetic Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
| | - Peter N Fiorica
- Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
| | - James L Li
- Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
| | - Zepeng Mu
- Section of Genetic Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
| | - Olufunmilayo I Olopade
- Section of Hematology and Oncology, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
| | - Dezheng Huo
- Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA; Section of Genetic Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
| | - Hae Kyung Im
- Section of Genetic Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
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Troubat L, Fettahoglu D, Henches L, Aschard H, Julienne H. Multi-trait GWAS for diverse ancestries: mapping the knowledge gap. BMC Genomics 2024; 25:375. [PMID: 38627641 PMCID: PMC11022331 DOI: 10.1186/s12864-024-10293-3] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/13/2023] [Accepted: 04/09/2024] [Indexed: 04/19/2024] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Approximately 95% of samples analyzed in univariate genome-wide association studies (GWAS) are of European ancestry. This bias toward European ancestry populations in association screening also exists for other analyses and methods that are often developed and tested on European ancestry only. However, existing data in non-European populations, which are often of modest sample size, could benefit from innovative approaches as recently illustrated in the context of polygenic risk scores. METHODS Here, we extend and assess the potential limitations and gains of our multi-trait GWAS pipeline, JASS (Joint Analysis of Summary Statistics), for the analysis of non-European ancestries. To this end, we conducted the joint GWAS of 19 hematological traits and glycemic traits across five ancestries (European (EUR), admixed American (AMR), African (AFR), East Asian (EAS), and South-East Asian (SAS)). RESULTS We detected 367 new genome-wide significant associations in non-European populations (15 in Admixed American (AMR), 72 in African (AFR) and 280 in East Asian (EAS)). New associations detected represent 5%, 17% and 13% of associations in the AFR, AMR and EAS populations, respectively. Overall, multi-trait testing increases the replication of European associated loci in non-European ancestry by 15%. Pleiotropic effects were highly similar at significant loci across ancestries (e.g. the mean correlation between multi-trait genetic effects of EUR and EAS ancestries was 0.88). For hematological traits, strong discrepancies in multi-trait genetic effects are tied to known evolutionary divergences: the ARKC1 loci, which is adaptive to overcome p.vivax induced malaria. CONCLUSIONS Multi-trait GWAS can be a valuable tool to narrow the genetic knowledge gap between European and non-European populations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lucie Troubat
- Department of Computational Biology, Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, Paris, F-75015, France
| | - Deniz Fettahoglu
- Department of Computational Biology, Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, Paris, F-75015, France
| | - Léo Henches
- Department of Computational Biology, Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, Paris, F-75015, France
| | - Hugues Aschard
- Department of Computational Biology, Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, Paris, F-75015, France
- Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, 02115, USA
| | - Hanna Julienne
- Department of Computational Biology, Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, Paris, F-75015, France.
- Institut Pasteur, Université Paris Cité, Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Hub, Paris, F-75015, France.
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4
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Liu L, Yan R, Guo P, Ji J, Gong W, Xue F, Yuan Z, Zhou X. Conditional transcriptome-wide association study for fine-mapping candidate causal genes. Nat Genet 2024; 56:348-356. [PMID: 38279040 DOI: 10.1038/s41588-023-01645-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/18/2023] [Accepted: 12/08/2023] [Indexed: 01/28/2024]
Abstract
Transcriptome-wide association studies (TWASs) aim to integrate genome-wide association studies with expression-mapping studies to identify genes with genetically predicted expression (GReX) associated with a complex trait. In the present report, we develop a method, GIFT (gene-based integrative fine-mapping through conditional TWAS), that performs conditional TWAS analysis by explicitly controlling for GReX of all other genes residing in a local region to fine-map putatively causal genes. GIFT is frequentist in nature, explicitly models both expression correlation and cis-single nucleotide polymorphism linkage disequilibrium across multiple genes and uses a likelihood framework to account for expression prediction uncertainty. As a result, GIFT produces calibrated P values and is effective for fine-mapping. We apply GIFT to analyze six traits in the UK Biobank, where GIFT narrows down the set size of putatively causal genes by 32.16-91.32% compared with existing TWAS fine-mapping approaches. The genes identified by GIFT highlight the importance of vessel regulation in determining blood pressures and lipid metabolism for regulating lipid levels.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lu Liu
- Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China
- Institute for Medical Dataology, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China
| | - Ran Yan
- Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China
- Institute for Medical Dataology, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China
| | - Ping Guo
- Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China
- Institute for Medical Dataology, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China
| | - Jiadong Ji
- Institute for Financial Studies, Shandong University, Jinan, China
| | - Weiming Gong
- Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China
- Institute for Medical Dataology, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China
| | - Fuzhong Xue
- Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China
- Institute for Medical Dataology, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China
| | - Zhongshang Yuan
- Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China.
- Institute for Medical Dataology, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, China.
| | - Xiang Zhou
- Department of Biostatistics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
- Center for Statistical Genetics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
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5
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Evans P, Nagai T, Konkashbaev A, Zhou D, Knapik EW, Gamazon ER. Transcriptome-Wide Association Studies (TWAS): Methodologies, Applications, and Challenges. Curr Protoc 2024; 4:e981. [PMID: 38314955 PMCID: PMC10846672 DOI: 10.1002/cpz1.981] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 02/07/2024]
Abstract
Transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) methodologies aim to identify genetic effects on phenotypes through the mediation of gene transcription. In TWAS, in silico models of gene expression are trained as functions of genetic variants and then applied to genome-wide association study (GWAS) data. This post-GWAS analysis identifies gene-trait associations with high interpretability, enabling follow-up functional genomics studies and the development of genetics-anchored resources. We provide an overview of commonly used TWAS approaches, their advantages and limitations, and some widely used applications. © 2024 Wiley Periodicals LLC.
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Affiliation(s)
- Patrick Evans
- Division of Genetic Medicine and Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee
| | - Taylor Nagai
- Division of Genetic Medicine and Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee
| | - Anuar Konkashbaev
- Division of Genetic Medicine and Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee
| | - Dan Zhou
- Division of Genetic Medicine and Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee
| | - Ela W Knapik
- Division of Genetic Medicine and Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee
| | - Eric R Gamazon
- Division of Genetic Medicine and Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, Tennessee
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Mishra M, Nahlawi L, Zhong Y, De T, Yang G, Alarcon C, Perera MA. LA-GEM: imputation of gene expression with incorporation of Local Ancestry. PACIFIC SYMPOSIUM ON BIOCOMPUTING. PACIFIC SYMPOSIUM ON BIOCOMPUTING 2024; 29:341-358. [PMID: 38160291 PMCID: PMC10764069] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/03/2024]
Abstract
Gene imputation and TWAS have become a staple in the genomics medicine discovery space; helping to identify genes whose regulation effects may contribute to disease susceptibility. However, the cohorts on which these methods are built are overwhelmingly of European Ancestry. This means that the unique regulatory variation that exist in non-European populations, specifically African Ancestry populations, may not be included in the current models. Moreover, African Americans are an admixed population, with a mix of European and African segments within their genome. No gene imputation model thus far has incorporated the effect of local ancestry (LA) on gene expression imputation. As such, we created LA-GEM which was trained and tested on a cohort of 60 African American hepatocyte primary cultures. Uniquely, LA-GEM include local ancestry inference in its prediction of gene expression. We compared the performance of LA-GEM to PrediXcan trained the same dataset (with no inclusion of local ancestry) We were able to reliably predict the expression of 2559 genes (1326 in LA-GEM and 1236 in PrediXcan). Of these, 546 genes were unique to LA-GEM, including the CYP3A5 gene which is critical to drug metabolism. We conducted TWAS analysis on two African American clinical cohorts with pharmacogenomics phenotypic information to identity novel gene associations. In our IWPC warfarin cohort, we identified 17 transcriptome-wide significant hits. No gene reached are prespecified significance level in the clopidogrel cohort. We did see suggestive association with RAS3A to P2RY12 Reactivity Units (PRU), a clinical measure of response to anti-platelet therapy. This method demonstrated the need for the incorporation of LA into study in admixed populations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mrinal Mishra
- Department of Pharmacology, Center for Pharmacogenomics, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois, USA†Contributed equally to the work
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7
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Araujo DS, Nguyen C, Hu X, Mikhaylova AV, Gignoux C, Ardlie K, Taylor KD, Durda P, Liu Y, Papanicolaou G, Cho MH, Rich SS, Rotter JI, Im HK, Manichaikul A, Wheeler HE. Multivariate adaptive shrinkage improves cross-population transcriptome prediction and association studies in underrepresented populations. HGG ADVANCES 2023; 4:100216. [PMID: 37869564 PMCID: PMC10589725 DOI: 10.1016/j.xhgg.2023.100216] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/22/2023] [Accepted: 06/27/2023] [Indexed: 10/24/2023] Open
Abstract
Transcriptome prediction models built with data from European-descent individuals are less accurate when applied to different populations because of differences in linkage disequilibrium patterns and allele frequencies. We hypothesized that methods that leverage shared regulatory effects across different conditions, in this case, across different populations, may improve cross-population transcriptome prediction. To test this hypothesis, we made transcriptome prediction models for use in transcriptome-wide association studies (TWASs) using different methods (elastic net, joint-tissue imputation [JTI], matrix expression quantitative trait loci [Matrix eQTL], multivariate adaptive shrinkage in R [MASHR], and transcriptome-integrated genetic association resource [TIGAR]) and tested their out-of-sample transcriptome prediction accuracy in population-matched and cross-population scenarios. Additionally, to evaluate model applicability in TWASs, we integrated publicly available multiethnic genome-wide association study (GWAS) summary statistics from the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) study and Pan-ancestry genetic analysis of the UK Biobank (PanUKBB) with our developed transcriptome prediction models. In regard to transcriptome prediction accuracy, MASHR models performed better or the same as other methods in both population-matched and cross-population transcriptome predictions. Furthermore, in multiethnic TWASs, MASHR models yielded more discoveries that replicate in both PAGE and PanUKBB across all methods analyzed, including loci previously mapped in GWASs and loci previously not found in GWASs. Overall, our study demonstrates the importance of using methods that benefit from different populations' effect size estimates in order to improve TWASs for multiethnic or underrepresented populations.
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Affiliation(s)
- Daniel S. Araujo
- Program in Bioinformatics, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL 60660, USA
| | - Chris Nguyen
- Department of Biology, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL 60660, USA
| | - Xiaowei Hu
- Center for Public Health Genomics, Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22908, USA
| | - Anna V. Mikhaylova
- Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
| | - Chris Gignoux
- Division of Biomedical Informatics and Personalized Medicine, Department of Medicine, UC Denver Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO 80045, USA
| | - Kristin Ardlie
- Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
| | - Kent D. Taylor
- The Institute for Translational Genomics and Population Sciences, Department of Pediatrics, the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Torrance, CA 90502, USA
| | - Peter Durda
- Laboratory for Clinical Biochemistry Research, University of Vermont, Colchester, VT 05446, USA
| | - Yongmei Liu
- Department of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC 27710, USA
| | - George Papanicolaou
- Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cardiovascular Sciences, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
| | - Michael H. Cho
- Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Stephen S. Rich
- Center for Public Health Genomics, Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22908, USA
| | - Jerome I. Rotter
- The Institute for Translational Genomics and Population Sciences, Department of Pediatrics, the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Torrance, CA 90502, USA
| | - NHLBI TOPMed Consortium
- Program in Bioinformatics, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL 60660, USA
- Department of Biology, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL 60660, USA
- Center for Public Health Genomics, Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22908, USA
- Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
- Division of Biomedical Informatics and Personalized Medicine, Department of Medicine, UC Denver Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO 80045, USA
- Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
- The Institute for Translational Genomics and Population Sciences, Department of Pediatrics, the Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Torrance, CA 90502, USA
- Laboratory for Clinical Biochemistry Research, University of Vermont, Colchester, VT 05446, USA
- Department of Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC 27710, USA
- Epidemiology Branch, Division of Cardiovascular Sciences, National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA
- Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
- Section of Genetic Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
| | - Hae Kyung Im
- Section of Genetic Medicine, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
| | - Ani Manichaikul
- Center for Public Health Genomics, Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22908, USA
| | - Heather E. Wheeler
- Program in Bioinformatics, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL 60660, USA
- Department of Biology, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL 60660, USA
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8
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Trastulla L, Moser S, Jiménez-Barrón LT, Andlauer TF, von Scheidt M, Budde M, Heilbronner U, Papiol S, Teumer A, Homuth G, Falkai P, Völzke H, Dörr M, Schulze TG, Gagneur J, Iorio F, Müller-Myhsok B, Schunkert H, Ziller MJ. Distinct genetic liability profiles define clinically relevant patient strata across common diseases. MEDRXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR HEALTH SCIENCES 2023:2023.05.10.23289788. [PMID: 37214898 PMCID: PMC10197798 DOI: 10.1101/2023.05.10.23289788] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/24/2023]
Abstract
Genome-wide association studies have unearthed a wealth of genetic associations across many complex diseases. However, translating these associations into biological mechanisms contributing to disease etiology and heterogeneity has been challenging. Here, we hypothesize that the effects of disease-associated genetic variants converge onto distinct cell type specific molecular pathways within distinct subgroups of patients. In order to test this hypothesis, we develop the CASTom-iGEx pipeline to operationalize individual level genotype data to interpret personal polygenic risk and identify the genetic basis of clinical heterogeneity. The paradigmatic application of this approach to coronary artery disease and schizophrenia reveals a convergence of disease associated variant effects onto known and novel genes, pathways, and biological processes. The biological process specific genetic liabilities are not equally distributed across patients. Instead, they defined genetically distinct groups of patients, characterized by different profiles across pathways, endophenotypes, and disease severity. These results provide further evidence for a genetic contribution to clinical heterogeneity and point to the existence of partially distinct pathomechanisms across patient subgroups. Thus, the universally applicable approach presented here has the potential to constitute an important component of future personalized medicine concepts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lucia Trastulla
- Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany
- Technische Universität München Medical Graduate Center Experimental Medicine, Munich, Germany
- Human Technopole, Milan, Italy
| | - Sylvain Moser
- Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany
- Technische Universität München Medical Graduate Center Experimental Medicine, Munich, Germany
- International Max Planck Research School for Translational Psychiatry (IMPRS-TP), Munich, Germany
| | - Laura T. Jiménez-Barrón
- Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany
- International Max Planck Research School for Translational Psychiatry (IMPRS-TP), Munich, Germany
| | | | - Moritz von Scheidt
- Klinik für Herz-und Kreislauferkrankungen, Deutsches Herzzentrum München, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany
- German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), Partner Site Munich Heart Alliance, Munich, Germany
| | | | - Monika Budde
- Institute of Psychiatric Phenomics and Genomics (IPPG), University Hospital, LMU Munich, Munich 80336, Germany
| | - Urs Heilbronner
- Institute of Psychiatric Phenomics and Genomics (IPPG), University Hospital, LMU Munich, Munich 80336, Germany
| | - Sergi Papiol
- Institute of Psychiatric Phenomics and Genomics (IPPG), University Hospital, LMU Munich, Munich 80336, Germany
| | - Alexander Teumer
- German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), Partner Site Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
- Institute of Community Medicine, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
| | - Georg Homuth
- Interfaculty Institute for Genetics and Functional Genomics, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
| | - Peter Falkai
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, LMU Munich, Munich 80336, Germany
| | - Henry Völzke
- German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), Partner Site Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
- Institute of Community Medicine, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
| | - Marcus Dörr
- Department of Internal Medicine B, University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
- German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), Partner Site Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany
| | - Thomas G. Schulze
- Institute of Psychiatric Phenomics and Genomics (IPPG), University Hospital, LMU Munich, Munich 80336, Germany
| | - Julien Gagneur
- Department of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, Garching, Germany
| | | | - Bertram Müller-Myhsok
- Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany
- Institute of Translational Medicine, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
| | - Heribert Schunkert
- Klinik für Herz-und Kreislauferkrankungen, Deutsches Herzzentrum München, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany
- German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), Partner Site Munich Heart Alliance, Munich, Germany
| | - Michael J. Ziller
- Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany
- Department of Psychiatry, University of Münster, Münster, Germany
- Center for Soft Nanoscience, University of Münster, Münster, Germany
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9
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Knutson KA, Pan W. MATS: a novel multi-ancestry transcriptome-wide association study to account for heterogeneity in the effects of cis-regulated gene expression on complex traits. Hum Mol Genet 2023; 32:1237-1251. [PMID: 36179104 PMCID: PMC10077507 DOI: 10.1093/hmg/ddac247] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/21/2022] [Revised: 09/16/2022] [Accepted: 09/28/2022] [Indexed: 01/16/2023] Open
Abstract
The Transcriptome-Wide Association Study (TWAS) is a widely used approach which integrates gene expression and Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) data to study the role of cis-regulated gene expression (GEx) in complex traits. However, the genetic architecture of GEx varies across populations, and recent findings point to possible ancestral heterogeneity in the effects of GEx on complex traits, which may be amplified in TWAS by modeling GEx as a function of cis-eQTLs. Here, we present a novel extension to TWAS to account for heterogeneity in the effects of cis-regulated GEx which are correlated with ancestry. Our proposed Multi-Ancestry TwaS (MATS) framework jointly analyzes samples from multiple populations and distinguishes between shared, ancestry-specific and/or subject-specific expression-trait associations. As such, MATS amplifies power to detect shared GEx associations over ancestry-stratified TWAS through increased sample sizes, and facilitates the detection of genes with subgroup-specific associations which may be masked by standard TWAS. Our simulations highlight the improved Type-I error conservation and power of MATS compared with competing approaches. Our real data applications to Alzheimer's disease (AD) case-control genotypes from the Alzheimer's Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP) and continuous phenotypes from the UK Biobank (UKBB) identify a number of unique gene-trait associations which were not discovered through standard and/or ancestry-stratified TWAS. Ultimately, these findings promote MATS as a powerful method for detecting and estimating significant gene expression effects on complex traits within multi-ancestry cohorts and corroborates the mounting evidence for inter-population heterogeneity in gene-trait associations.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Wei Pan
- Division of Biostatistics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
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10
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Kurant DE. Opportunities and Challenges with Artificial Intelligence in Genomics. Clin Lab Med 2023; 43:87-97. [PMID: 36764810 DOI: 10.1016/j.cll.2022.09.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/15/2022]
Abstract
The development of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms may allow for advances in patient care. There are existing and potential applications in cancer diagnosis and monitoring, identification of at-risk groups of individuals, classification of genetic variants, and even prediction of patient ancestry. This article provides an overview of some current and future applications of artificial intelligence in genomic medicine, in addition to discussing challenges and considerations when bringing these tools into clinical practice.
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Affiliation(s)
- Danielle E Kurant
- Medical Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
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11
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Bhattacharya A, Hirbo JB, Zhou D, Zhou W, Zheng J, Kanai M, Pasaniuc B, Gamazon ER, Cox NJ. Best practices for multi-ancestry, meta-analytic transcriptome-wide association studies: Lessons from the Global Biobank Meta-analysis Initiative. CELL GENOMICS 2022; 2:100180. [PMID: 36341024 PMCID: PMC9631681 DOI: 10.1016/j.xgen.2022.100180] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
Abstract
The Global Biobank Meta-analysis Initiative (GBMI), through its diversity, provides a valuable opportunity to study population-wide and ancestry-specific genetic associations. However, with multiple ascertainment strategies and multi-ancestry study populations across biobanks, GBMI presents unique challenges in implementing statistical genetics methods. Transcriptome-wide association studies (TWASs) boost detection power for and provide biological context to genetic associations by integrating genetic variant-to-trait associations from genome-wide association studies (GWASs) with predictive models of gene expression. TWASs present unique challenges beyond GWASs, especially in a multi-biobank, meta-analytic setting. Here, we present the GBMI TWAS pipeline, outlining practical considerations for ancestry and tissue specificity, meta-analytic strategies, and open challenges at every step of the framework. We advise conducting ancestry-stratified TWASs using ancestry-specific expression models and meta-analyzing results using inverse-variance weighting, showing the least test statistic inflation. Our work provides a foundation for adding transcriptomic context to biobank-linked GWASs, allowing for ancestry-aware discovery to accelerate genomic medicine.
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Affiliation(s)
- Arjun Bhattacharya
- Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA,Institute of Quantitative and Computational Biosciences, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA,Corresponding author
| | - Jibril B. Hirbo
- Department of Medicine, Division of Genetic Medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN, USA,Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Dan Zhou
- Department of Medicine, Division of Genetic Medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN, USA,Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
| | - Wei Zhou
- Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA,Program in Medical and Population Genetics, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA,Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Jie Zheng
- MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (IEU), Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol, Oakfield House, Oakfield Grove, Bristol BS8 2BN, UK
| | - Masahiro Kanai
- Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA,Program in Medical and Population Genetics, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA,Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA,Department of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA,Department of Statistical Genetics, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Suita 565-0871, Japan
| | | | - Bogdan Pasaniuc
- Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA,Department of Human Genetics, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA,Department of Computational Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Eric R. Gamazon
- Department of Medicine, Division of Genetic Medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN, USA,Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA,MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
| | - Nancy J. Cox
- Department of Medicine, Division of Genetic Medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN, USA,Vanderbilt Genetics Institute, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA
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