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Akinbiyi T, McPeek MS, Abney M. ADELLE: A global testing method for Trans-eQTL mapping. BIORXIV : THE PREPRINT SERVER FOR BIOLOGY 2024:2024.02.24.581871. [PMID: 38464248 PMCID: PMC10925110 DOI: 10.1101/2024.02.24.581871] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 03/12/2024]
Abstract
Understanding the genetic regulatory mechanisms of gene expression is a challenging and ongoing problem. Genetic variants that are associated with expression levels are readily identified when they are proximal to the gene (i.e., cis-eQTLs), but SNPs distant from the gene whose expression levels they are associated with (i.e., trans-eQTLs) have been much more difficult to discover, even though they account for a majority of the heritability in gene expression levels. A major impediment to the identification of more trans-eQTLs is the lack of statistical methods that are powerful enough to overcome the obstacles of small effect sizes and large multiple testing burden of trans-eQTL mapping. Here, we propose ADELLE, a powerful statistical testing framework that requires only summary statistics and is designed to be most sensitive to SNPs that are associated with multiple gene expression levels, a characteristic of many trans-eQTLs. In simulations, we show that for detecting SNPs that are associated with 0.1%-2% of 10,000 traits, among the 7 methods we consider ADELLE is clearly the most powerful overall, with either the highest power or power not significantly different from the highest for all settings in that range. We apply ADELLE to a mouse advanced intercross line data set and show its ability to find trans-eQTLs that were not significant under a standard analysis. This demonstrates that ADELLE is a powerful tool at uncovering trans regulators of genetic expression.
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Wittich H, Ardlie K, Taylor KD, Durda P, Liu Y, Mikhaylova A, Gignoux CR, Cho MH, Rich SS, Rotter JI, Manichaikul A, Im HK, Wheeler HE. Transcriptome-wide association study of the plasma proteome reveals cis and trans regulatory mechanisms underlying complex traits. Am J Hum Genet 2024; 111:445-455. [PMID: 38320554 PMCID: PMC10940016 DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2024.01.006] [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: 09/25/2023] [Revised: 01/12/2024] [Accepted: 01/12/2024] [Indexed: 02/08/2024] Open
Abstract
Regulation of transcription and translation are mechanisms through which genetic variants affect complex traits. Expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) studies have been more successful at identifying cis-eQTL (within 1 Mb of the transcription start site) than trans-eQTL. Here, we tested the cis component of gene expression for association with observed plasma protein levels to identify cis- and trans-acting genes that regulate protein levels. We used transcriptome prediction models from 49 Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Project tissues to predict the cis component of gene expression and tested the predicted expression of every gene in every tissue for association with the observed abundance of 3,622 plasma proteins measured in 3,301 individuals from the INTERVAL study. We tested significant results for replication in 971 individuals from the Trans-omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). We found 1,168 and 1,210 cis- and trans-acting associations that replicated in TOPMed (FDR < 0.05) with a median expected true positive rate (π1) across tissues of 0.806 and 0.390, respectively. The target proteins of trans-acting genes were enriched for transcription factor binding sites and autoimmune diseases in the GWAS catalog. Furthermore, we found a higher correlation between predicted expression and protein levels of the same underlying gene (R = 0.17) than observed expression (R = 0.10, p = 7.50 × 10-11). This indicates the cis-acting genetically regulated (heritable) component of gene expression is more consistent across tissues than total observed expression (genetics + environment) and is useful in uncovering the function of SNPs associated with complex traits.
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Affiliation(s)
- Henry Wittich
- Program in Bioinformatics, Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL 60660, 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
| | - Anna Mikhaylova
- Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA
| | - Chris R Gignoux
- Division of Biomedical Informatics and Personalized Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of Colorado Denver Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO 80045, 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
| | - Ani Manichaikul
- Center for Public Health Genomics, Department of Public Health Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA 22908, USA
| | - Hae Kyung Im
- Section of Genetic Medicine, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, 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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Crawford J, Christensen BC, Chikina M, Greene CS. Widespread redundancy in -omics profiles of cancer mutation states. Genome Biol 2022; 23:137. [PMID: 35761387 PMCID: PMC9238138 DOI: 10.1186/s13059-022-02705-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/15/2021] [Accepted: 06/14/2022] [Indexed: 02/04/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND In studies of cellular function in cancer, researchers are increasingly able to choose from many -omics assays as functional readouts. Choosing the correct readout for a given study can be difficult, and which layer of cellular function is most suitable to capture the relevant signal remains unclear. RESULTS We consider prediction of cancer mutation status (presence or absence) from functional -omics data as a representative problem that presents an opportunity to quantify and compare the ability of different -omics readouts to capture signals of dysregulation in cancer. From the TCGA Pan-Cancer Atlas that contains genetic alteration data, we focus on RNA sequencing, DNA methylation arrays, reverse phase protein arrays (RPPA), microRNA, and somatic mutational signatures as -omics readouts. Across a collection of genes recurrently mutated in cancer, RNA sequencing tends to be the most effective predictor of mutation state. We find that one or more other data types for many of the genes are approximately equally effective predictors. Performance is more variable between mutations than that between data types for the same mutation, and there is little difference between the top data types. We also find that combining data types into a single multi-omics model provides little or no improvement in predictive ability over the best individual data type. CONCLUSIONS Based on our results, for the design of studies focused on the functional outcomes of cancer mutations, there are often multiple -omics types that can serve as effective readouts, although gene expression seems to be a reasonable default option.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jake Crawford
- grid.25879.310000 0004 1936 8972Genomics and Computational Biology Graduate Group, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA USA
| | - Brock C. Christensen
- grid.254880.30000 0001 2179 2404Department of Epidemiology, Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College, Lebanon, NH USA ,grid.254880.30000 0001 2179 2404Department of Molecular and Systems Biology, Geisel School of Medicine, Dartmouth College, Lebanon, NH USA
| | - Maria Chikina
- grid.21925.3d0000 0004 1936 9000Department of Computational and Systems Biology, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA USA
| | - Casey S. Greene
- grid.430503.10000 0001 0703 675XDepartment of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO USA ,grid.430503.10000 0001 0703 675XCenter for Health AI, University of Colorado School of Medicine, Aurora, CO USA
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Gao C, Wei H, Zhang K. LORSEN: Fast and Efficient eQTL Mapping With Low Rank Penalized Regression. Front Genet 2021; 12:690926. [PMID: 34868194 PMCID: PMC8636089 DOI: 10.3389/fgene.2021.690926] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/04/2021] [Accepted: 10/08/2021] [Indexed: 12/02/2022] Open
Abstract
Characterization of genetic variations that are associated with gene expression levels is essential to understand cellular mechanisms that underline human complex traits. Expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) mapping attempts to identify genetic variants, such as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), that affect the expression of one or more genes. With the availability of a large volume of gene expression data, it is necessary and important to develop fast and efficient statistical and computational methods to perform eQTL mapping for such large scale data. In this paper, we proposed a new method, the low rank penalized regression method (LORSEN), for eQTL mapping. We evaluated and compared the performance of LORSEN with two existing methods for eQTL mapping using extensive simulations as well as real data from the HapMap3 project. Simulation studies showed that our method outperformed two commonly used methods for eQTL mapping, LORS and FastLORS, in many scenarios in terms of area under the curve (AUC). We illustrated the usefulness of our method by applying it to SNP variants data and gene expression levels on four chromosomes from the HapMap3 Project.
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Affiliation(s)
- Cheng Gao
- Department of Mathematical Sciences, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, United States
| | - Hairong Wei
- College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, United States
| | - Kui Zhang
- Department of Mathematical Sciences, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, United States
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