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Julienne H, Laville V, McCaw ZR, He Z, Guillemot V, Lasry C, Ziyatdinov A, Nerin C, Vaysse A, Lechat P, Ménager H, Le Goff W, Dube MP, Kraft P, Ionita-Laza I, Vilhjálmsson BJ, Aschard H. Multitrait GWAS to connect disease variants and biological mechanisms. PLoS Genet 2021; 17:e1009713. [PMID: 34460823 PMCID: PMC8437297 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1009713] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/20/2021] [Revised: 09/13/2021] [Accepted: 07/12/2021] [Indexed: 12/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have uncovered a wealth of associations between common variants and human phenotypes. Here, we present an integrative analysis of GWAS summary statistics from 36 phenotypes to decipher multitrait genetic architecture and its link with biological mechanisms. Our framework incorporates multitrait association mapping along with an investigation of the breakdown of genetic associations into clusters of variants harboring similar multitrait association profiles. Focusing on two subsets of immunity and metabolism phenotypes, we then demonstrate how genetic variants within clusters can be mapped to biological pathways and disease mechanisms. Finally, for the metabolism set, we investigate the link between gene cluster assignment and the success of drug targets in randomized controlled trials.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hanna Julienne
- Department of Computational Biology, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
| | - Vincent Laville
- Department of Computational Biology, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
| | - Zachary R. McCaw
- Department of Biostatistics, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
| | - Zihuai He
- Department of Neurology and Neurological Sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, United States of America
| | - Vincent Guillemot
- Department of Computational Biology, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
| | - Carla Lasry
- Department of Computational Biology, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
| | - Andrey Ziyatdinov
- Department of Epidemiology, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
| | - Cyril Nerin
- Department of Computational Biology, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
| | - Amaury Vaysse
- Department of Computational Biology, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
| | - Pierre Lechat
- Department of Computational Biology, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
| | - Hervé Ménager
- Department of Computational Biology, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
| | - Wilfried Le Goff
- Sorbonne Université, INSERM, Institute of Cardiometabolism and Nutrition (ICAN), UMR_S 1166, Paris, France
| | - Marie-Pierre Dube
- Université de Montréal Beaulieu-Saucier Pharmacogenomics Centre, Montreal Heart Institute, Montreal, Canada
- Université de Montréal, Faculty of Medicine, Department of medicine, Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada
| | - Peter Kraft
- Department of Biostatistics, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
- Department of Epidemiology, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
| | - Iuliana Ionita-Laza
- Department of Biostatistics, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America
| | - Bjarni J. Vilhjálmsson
- National Centre for Register-based Research, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
- Bioinformatics Research Centre, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
| | - Hugues Aschard
- Department of Computational Biology, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
- Department of Epidemiology, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
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Badr MT, Omar M, Häcker G. Comprehensive Integration of Genome-Wide Association and Gene Expression Studies Reveals Novel Gene Signatures and Potential Therapeutic Targets for Helicobacter pylori-Induced Gastric Disease. Front Immunol 2021; 12:624117. [PMID: 33717131 PMCID: PMC7945594 DOI: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.624117] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/30/2020] [Accepted: 01/04/2021] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
Helicobacter pylori is a gram-negative bacterium that colonizes the human gastric mucosa and can lead to gastric inflammation, ulcers, and stomach cancer. Due to the increase in H. pylori antimicrobial resistance new methods to identify the molecular mechanisms of H. pylori-induced pathology are urgently needed. Here we utilized a computational biology approach, harnessing genome-wide association and gene expression studies to identify genes and pathways determining disease development. We mined gene expression data related to H. pylori-infection and its complications from publicly available databases to identify four human datasets as discovery datasets and used two different multi-cohort analysis pipelines to define a H. pylori-induced gene signature. An initial Helicobacter-signature was curated using the MetaIntegrator pipeline and validated in cell line model datasets. With this approach we identified cell line models that best match gene regulation in human pathology. A second analysis pipeline through NetworkAnalyst was used to refine our initial signature. This approach defined a 55-gene signature that is stably deregulated in disease conditions. The 55-gene signature was validated in datasets from human gastric adenocarcinomas and could separate tumor from normal tissue. As only a small number of H. pylori patients develop cancer, this gene-signature must interact with other host and environmental factors to initiate tumorigenesis. We tested for possible interactions between our curated gene signature and host genomic background mutations and polymorphisms by integrating genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and known oncogenes. We analyzed public databases to identify genes harboring single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with gastric pathologies and driver genes in gastric cancers. Using this approach, we identified 37 genes from GWA studies and 61 oncogenes, which were used with our 55-gene signature to map gene-gene interaction networks. In conclusion, our analysis defines a unique gene signature driven by H. pylori-infection at early phases and that remains relevant through different stages of pathology up to gastric cancer, a stage where H. pylori itself is rarely detectable. Furthermore, this signature elucidates many factors of host gene and pathway regulation in infection and can be used as a target for drug repurposing and testing of infection models suitability to investigate human infection.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mohamed Tarek Badr
- Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, Medical Center—University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
- IMM-PACT-Program, Faculty of Medicine, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
| | - Mohamed Omar
- Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, NY, United States
| | - Georg Häcker
- Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, Medical Center—University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
- BIOSS Centre for Biological Signalling Studies, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany
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