@article {6626, title = {Fine Mapping and Identification of BMI Loci in African Americans.}, journal = {Am J Hum Genet}, volume = {93}, year = {2013}, month = {2013 Oct 3}, pages = {661-71}, abstract = {

Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) primarily performed in European-ancestry (EA) populations have identified numerous loci associated with body mass index (BMI). However, it is still unclear whether these GWAS loci can be generalized to other ethnic groups, such as African Americans (AAs). Furthermore, the putative functional variant or variants in these loci mostly remain under investigation. The overall lower linkage disequilibrium in AA compared to EA populations provides the opportunity to narrow in or fine-map these BMI-related loci. Therefore, we used the Metabochip to densely genotype and evaluate 21 BMI GWAS loci identified in EA studies in 29,151 AAs from the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) study. Eight of the 21 loci (SEC16B, TMEM18, ETV5, GNPDA2, TFAP2B, BDNF, FTO, and MC4R) were found to be associated with BMI in AAs at 5.8~{\texttimes} 10(-5). Within seven out of these eight loci, we found that, on average, a substantially smaller number of variants was correlated (r(2) > 0.5) with the most significant SNP in AA than in EA populations (16 versus 55). Conditional analyses revealed GNPDA2 harboring a potential additional independent signal. Moreover, Metabochip-wide discovery analyses revealed two BMI-related loci, BRE (rs116612809, p = 3.6~{\texttimes} 10(-8)) and DHX34 (rs4802349, p = 1.2~{\texttimes} 10(-7)), which were significant when adjustment was made for the total number of SNPs tested across the chip. These results demonstrate that fine mapping in AAs is a powerful approach for both narrowing in on the underlying causal variants in known loci and discovering BMI-related loci.

}, keywords = {Adult, African Americans, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Body Mass Index, Female, Genetic Loci, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genome, Human, Genome-Wide Association Study, Genotype, Humans, Linkage Disequilibrium, Male, Middle Aged, Obesity, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Young Adult}, issn = {1537-6605}, doi = {10.1016/j.ajhg.2013.08.012}, author = {Gong, Jian and Schumacher, Fredrick and Lim, Unhee and Hindorff, Lucia A and Haessler, Jeff and Buyske, Steven and Carlson, Christopher S and Rosse, Stephanie and B{\r u}zkov{\'a}, Petra and Fornage, Myriam and Gross, Myron and Pankratz, Nathan and Pankow, James S and Schreiner, Pamela J and Cooper, Richard and Ehret, Georg and Gu, C Charles and Houston, Denise and Irvin, Marguerite R and Jackson, Rebecca and Kuller, Lew and Henderson, Brian and Cheng, Iona and Wilkens, Lynne and Leppert, Mark and Lewis, Cora E and Li, Rongling and Nguyen, Khanh-Dung H and Goodloe, Robert and Farber-Eger, Eric and Boston, Jonathan and Dilks, Holli H and Ritchie, Marylyn D and Fowke, Jay and Pooler, Loreall and Graff, Misa and Fernandez-Rhodes, Lindsay and Cochrane, Barbara and Boerwinkle, Eric and Kooperberg, Charles and Matise, Tara C and Le Marchand, Lo{\"\i}c and Crawford, Dana C and Haiman, Christopher A and North, Kari E and Peters, Ulrike} } @article {6029, title = {A genome-wide association study for venous thromboembolism: the extended cohorts for heart and aging research in genomic epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium.}, journal = {Genet Epidemiol}, volume = {37}, year = {2013}, month = {2013 Jul}, pages = {512-521}, abstract = {

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a common, heritable disease resulting in high rates of hospitalization and mortality. Yet few associations between VTE and genetic variants, all in the coagulation pathway, have been established. To identify additional genetic determinants of VTE, we conducted a two-stage genome-wide association study (GWAS) among individuals of European ancestry in the extended cohorts for heart and aging research in genomic epidemiology (CHARGE) VTE consortium. The discovery GWAS comprised 1,618 incident VTE cases out of 44,499 participants from six community-based studies. Genotypes for genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were imputed to approximately 2.5 million SNPs in HapMap and association with VTE assessed using study-design appropriate regression methods. Meta-analysis of these results identified two known loci, in F5 and ABO. Top 1,047 tag SNPs (P <= 0.0016) from the discovery GWAS were tested for association in an additional 3,231 cases and 3,536 controls from three case-control studies. In the combined data from these two stages, additional genome-wide significant associations were observed on 4q35 at F11 (top SNP rs4253399, intronic to F11) and on 4q28 at FGG (rs6536024, 9.7 kb from FGG; P < 5.0 {\texttimes} 10(-13) for both). The associations at the FGG locus were not completely explained by previously reported variants. Loci at or near SUSD1 and OTUD7A showed borderline yet novel associations (P < 5.0 {\texttimes} 10(-6) ) and constitute new candidate genes. In conclusion, this large GWAS replicated key genetic associations in F5 and ABO, and confirmed the importance of F11 and FGG loci for VTE. Future studies are warranted to better characterize the associations with F11 and FGG and to replicate the new candidate associations.

}, keywords = {Aged, Aging, Case-Control Studies, Cohort Studies, Female, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Male, Meta-Analysis as Topic, Middle Aged, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Regression Analysis, Risk Factors, Venous Thromboembolism}, issn = {1098-2272}, doi = {10.1002/gepi.21731}, author = {Tang, Weihong and Teichert, Martina and Chasman, Daniel I and Heit, John A and Morange, Pierre-Emmanuel and Li, Guo and Pankratz, Nathan and Leebeek, Frank W and Par{\'e}, Guillaume and de Andrade, Mariza and Tzourio, Christophe and Psaty, Bruce M and Basu, Saonli and Ruiter, Rikje and Rose, Lynda and Armasu, Sebastian M and Lumley, Thomas and Heckbert, Susan R and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Lathrop, Mark and Rice, Kenneth M and Cushman, Mary and Hofman, Albert and Lambert, Jean-Charles and Glazer, Nicole L and Pankow, James S and Witteman, Jacqueline C and Amouyel, Philippe and Bis, Joshua C and Bovill, Edwin G and Kong, Xiaoxiao and Tracy, Russell P and Boerwinkle, Eric and Rotter, Jerome I and Tr{\'e}gou{\"e}t, David-Alexandre and Loth, Daan W and Stricker, Bruno H Ch and Ridker, Paul M and Folsom, Aaron R and Smith, Nicholas L} } @article {6789, title = {Large-scale meta-analysis of genome-wide association data identifies six new risk loci for Parkinson{\textquoteright}s disease.}, journal = {Nat Genet}, volume = {46}, year = {2014}, month = {2014 Sep}, pages = {989-93}, abstract = {

We conducted a meta-analysis of Parkinson{\textquoteright}s disease genome-wide association studies using a common set of 7,893,274 variants across 13,708 cases and 95,282 controls. Twenty-six loci were identified as having genome-wide significant association; these and 6 additional previously reported loci were then tested in an independent set of 5,353 cases and 5,551 controls. Of the 32 tested SNPs, 24 replicated, including 6 newly identified loci. Conditional analyses within loci showed that four loci, including GBA, GAK-DGKQ, SNCA and the HLA region, contain a secondary independent risk variant. In total, we identified and replicated 28 independent risk variants for Parkinson{\textquoteright}s disease across 24 loci. Although the effect of each individual locus was small, risk profile analysis showed substantial cumulative risk in a comparison of the highest and lowest quintiles of genetic risk (odds ratio (OR) = 3.31, 95\% confidence interval (CI) = 2.55-4.30; P = 2 {\texttimes} 10(-16)). We also show six risk loci associated with proximal gene expression or DNA methylation.

}, keywords = {Case-Control Studies, Genetic Loci, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genome-Wide Association Study, Genotype, Humans, Parkinson Disease, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Risk Factors}, issn = {1546-1718}, doi = {10.1038/ng.3043}, author = {Nalls, Mike A and Pankratz, Nathan and Lill, Christina M and Do, Chuong B and Hernandez, Dena G and Saad, Mohamad and DeStefano, Anita L and Kara, Eleanna and Bras, Jose and Sharma, Manu and Schulte, Claudia and Keller, Margaux F and Arepalli, Sampath and Letson, Christopher and Edsall, Connor and Stefansson, Hreinn and Liu, Xinmin and Pliner, Hannah and Lee, Joseph H and Cheng, Rong and Ikram, M Arfan and Ioannidis, John P A and Hadjigeorgiou, Georgios M and Bis, Joshua C and Martinez, Maria and Perlmutter, Joel S and Goate, Alison and Marder, Karen and Fiske, Brian and Sutherland, Margaret and Xiromerisiou, Georgia and Myers, Richard H and Clark, Lorraine N and Stefansson, Kari and Hardy, John A and Heutink, Peter and Chen, Honglei and Wood, Nicholas W and Houlden, Henry and Payami, Haydeh and Brice, Alexis and Scott, William K and Gasser, Thomas and Bertram, Lars and Eriksson, Nicholas and Foroud, Tatiana and Singleton, Andrew B} } @article {6360, title = {Multiancestral analysis of inflammation-related genetic variants and C-reactive protein in the population architecture using genomics and epidemiology study.}, journal = {Circ Cardiovasc Genet}, volume = {7}, year = {2014}, month = {2014 Apr}, pages = {178-88}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: C-reactive protein (CRP) is a biomarker of inflammation. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with CRP concentrations and inflammation-related traits such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes mellitus, and obesity. We aimed to replicate previous CRP-SNP associations, assess whether these associations generalize to additional race/ethnicity groups, and evaluate inflammation-related SNPs for a potentially pleiotropic association with CRP.

METHODS AND RESULTS: We selected and analyzed 16 CRP-associated and 250 inflammation-related GWAS SNPs among 40 473 African American, American Indian, Asian/Pacific Islander, European American, and Hispanic participants from 7 studies collaborating in the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) study. Fixed-effect meta-analyses combined study-specific race/ethnicity-stratified linear regression estimates to evaluate the association between each SNP and high-sensitivity CRP. Overall, 18 SNPs in 8 loci were significantly associated with CRP (Bonferroni-corrected P<3.1{\texttimes}10(-3) for replication, P<2.0{\texttimes}10(-4) for pleiotropy): Seven of these were specific to European Americans, while 9 additionally generalized to African Americans (1), Hispanics (5), or both (3); 1 SNP was seen only in African Americans and Hispanics. Two SNPs in the CELSR2/PSRC1/SORT1 locus showed a potentially novel association with CRP: rs599839 (P=2.0{\texttimes}10(-6)) and rs646776 (P=3.1{\texttimes}10(-5)).

CONCLUSIONS: We replicated 16 SNP-CRP associations, 10 of which generalized to African Americans and/or Hispanics. We also identified potentially novel pleiotropic associations with CRP for two SNPs previously associated with coronary artery disease and/or low-density lipoprotein-cholesterol. These findings demonstrate the benefit of evaluating genotype-phenotype associations in multiple race/ethnicity groups and looking for pleiotropic relationships among SNPs previously associated with related phenotypes.

}, keywords = {Adult, African Continental Ancestry Group, Aged, Asian Continental Ancestry Group, C-Reactive Protein, Female, Genetic Variation, Genome-Wide Association Study, Hispanic Americans, Humans, Indians, North American, Inflammation, Male, Middle Aged, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, United States, Young Adult}, issn = {1942-3268}, doi = {10.1161/CIRCGENETICS.113.000173}, author = {Kocarnik, Jonathan M and Pendergrass, Sarah A and Carty, Cara L and Pankow, James S and Schumacher, Fredrick R and Cheng, Iona and Durda, Peter and Ambite, Jose Luis and Deelman, Ewa and Cook, Nancy R and Liu, Simin and Wactawski-Wende, Jean and Hutter, Carolyn and Brown-Gentry, Kristin and Wilson, Sarah and Best, Lyle G and Pankratz, Nathan and Hong, Ching-Ping and Cole, Shelley A and Voruganti, V Saroja and B{\r u}zkov{\'a}, Petra and Jorgensen, Neal W and Jenny, Nancy S and Wilkens, Lynne R and Haiman, Christopher A and Kolonel, Laurence N and LaCroix, Andrea and North, Kari and Jackson, Rebecca and Le Marchand, Lo{\"\i}c and Hindorff, Lucia A and Crawford, Dana C and Gross, Myron and Peters, Ulrike} } @article {6597, title = {Association of exome sequences with plasma C-reactive protein levels in >9000 participants.}, journal = {Hum Mol Genet}, volume = {24}, year = {2015}, month = {2015 Jan 15}, pages = {559-71}, abstract = {

C-reactive protein (CRP) concentration is a heritable systemic marker of inflammation that is associated with cardiovascular disease risk. Genome-wide association studies have identified CRP-associated common variants associated in \~{}25 genes. Our aims were to apply exome sequencing to (1) assess whether the candidate loci contain rare coding variants associated with CRP levels and (2) perform an exome-wide search for rare variants in novel genes associated with CRP levels. We exome-sequenced 6050 European-Americans (EAs) and 3109 African-Americans (AAs) from the NHLBI-ESP and the CHARGE consortia, and performed association tests of sequence data with measured CRP levels. In single-variant tests across candidate loci, a novel rare (minor allele frequency = 0.16\%) CRP-coding variant (rs77832441-A; p.Thr59Met) was associated with 53\% lower mean CRP levels (P = 2.9 {\texttimes} 10(-6)). We replicated the association of rs77832441 in an exome array analysis of 11 414 EAs (P = 3.0 {\texttimes} 10(-15)). Despite a strong effect on CRP levels, rs77832441 was not associated with inflammation-related phenotypes including coronary heart disease. We also found evidence for an AA-specific association of APOE-ε2 rs7214 with higher CRP levels. At the exome-wide significance level (P < 5.0 {\texttimes} 10(-8)), we confirmed associations for reported common variants of HNF1A, CRP, IL6R and TOMM40-APOE. In gene-based tests, a burden of rare/lower frequency variation in CRP in EAs (P <= 6.8 {\texttimes} 10(-4)) and in retinoic acid receptor-related orphan receptor α (RORA) in AAs (P = 1.7 {\texttimes} 10(-3)) were associated with CRP levels at the candidate gene level (P < 2.0 {\texttimes} 10(-3)). This inquiry did not elucidate novel genes, but instead demonstrated that variants distributed across the allele frequency spectrum within candidate genes contribute to CRP levels.

}, keywords = {Adult, African Americans, C-Reactive Protein, Cardiovascular Diseases, Cohort Studies, European Continental Ancestry Group, Exome, Female, Gene Frequency, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genome-Wide Association Study, Hepatocyte Nuclear Factor 1-alpha, Humans, Male, Plasma, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Receptors, Interleukin-6, Risk Factors}, issn = {1460-2083}, doi = {10.1093/hmg/ddu450}, author = {Schick, Ursula M and Auer, Paul L and Bis, Joshua C and Lin, Honghuang and Wei, Peng and Pankratz, Nathan and Lange, Leslie A and Brody, Jennifer and Stitziel, Nathan O and Kim, Daniel S and Carlson, Christopher S and Fornage, Myriam and Haessler, Jeffery and Hsu, Li and Jackson, Rebecca D and Kooperberg, Charles and Leal, Suzanne M and Psaty, Bruce M and Boerwinkle, Eric and Tracy, Russell and Ardissino, Diego and Shah, Svati and Willer, Cristen and Loos, Ruth and Melander, Olle and McPherson, Ruth and Hovingh, Kees and Reilly, Muredach and Watkins, Hugh and Girelli, Domenico and Fontanillas, Pierre and Chasman, Daniel I and Gabriel, Stacey B and Gibbs, Richard and Nickerson, Deborah A and Kathiresan, Sekar and Peters, Ulrike and Dupuis, Jos{\'e}e and Wilson, James G and Rich, Stephen S and Morrison, Alanna C and Benjamin, Emelia J and Gross, Myron D and Reiner, Alex P} } @article {6788, title = {Rare and low-frequency variants and their association with plasma levels of fibrinogen, FVII, FVIII, and vWF.}, journal = {Blood}, volume = {126}, year = {2015}, month = {2015 Sep 10}, pages = {e19-29}, abstract = {

Fibrinogen, coagulation factor VII (FVII), and factor VIII (FVIII) and its carrier von Willebrand factor (vWF) play key roles in hemostasis. Previously identified common variants explain only a small fraction of the trait heritabilities, and additional variations may be explained by associations with rarer variants with larger effects. The aim of this study was to identify low-frequency (minor allele frequency [MAF] >=0.01 and <0.05) and rare (MAF <0.01) variants that influence plasma concentrations of these 4 hemostatic factors by meta-analyzing exome chip data from up to 76,000 participants of 4 ancestries. We identified 12 novel associations of low-frequency (n = 2) and rare (n = 10) variants across the fibrinogen, FVII, FVIII, and vWF traits that were independent of previously identified associations. Novel loci were found within previously reported genes and had effect sizes much larger than and independent of previously identified common variants. In addition, associations at KCNT1, HID1, and KATNB1 identified new candidate genes related to hemostasis for follow-up replication and functional genomic analysis. Newly identified low-frequency and rare-variant associations accounted for modest amounts of trait variance and therefore are unlikely to increase predicted trait heritability but provide new information for understanding individual variation in hemostasis pathways.

}, keywords = {Cohort Studies, Factor VII, Factor VIII, Fibrinogen, Gene Frequency, Genetic Association Studies, Genetic Variation, Humans, Nerve Tissue Proteins, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Potassium Channels, von Willebrand Factor}, issn = {1528-0020}, doi = {10.1182/blood-2015-02-624551}, author = {Huffman, Jennifer E and de Vries, Paul S and Morrison, Alanna C and Sabater-Lleal, Maria and Kacprowski, Tim and Auer, Paul L and Brody, Jennifer A and Chasman, Daniel I and Chen, Ming-Huei and Guo, Xiuqing and Lin, Li-An and Marioni, Riccardo E and M{\"u}ller-Nurasyid, Martina and Yanek, Lisa R and Pankratz, Nathan and Grove, Megan L and de Maat, Moniek P M and Cushman, Mary and Wiggins, Kerri L and Qi, Lihong and Sennblad, Bengt and Harris, Sarah E and Polasek, Ozren and Riess, Helene and Rivadeneira, Fernando and Rose, Lynda M and Goel, Anuj and Taylor, Kent D and Teumer, Alexander and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Vaidya, Dhananjay and Yao, Jie and Tang, Weihong and Levy, Daniel and Waldenberger, Melanie and Becker, Diane M and Folsom, Aaron R and Giulianini, Franco and Greinacher, Andreas and Hofman, Albert and Huang, Chiang-Ching and Kooperberg, Charles and Silveira, Angela and Starr, John M and Strauch, Konstantin and Strawbridge, Rona J and Wright, Alan F and McKnight, Barbara and Franco, Oscar H and Zakai, Neil and Mathias, Rasika A and Psaty, Bruce M and Ridker, Paul M and Tofler, Geoffrey H and V{\"o}lker, Uwe and Watkins, Hugh and Fornage, Myriam and Hamsten, Anders and Deary, Ian J and Boerwinkle, Eric and Koenig, Wolfgang and Rotter, Jerome I and Hayward, Caroline and Dehghan, Abbas and Reiner, Alex P and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Christopher J and Smith, Nicholas L} } @article {7138, title = {Exome Genotyping Identifies Pleiotropic Variants Associated with Red Blood Cell Traits.}, journal = {Am J Hum Genet}, volume = {99}, year = {2016}, month = {2016 Jul 7}, pages = {8-21}, abstract = {

Red blood cell (RBC) traits are important heritable clinical biomarkers and modifiers of disease severity. To identify coding genetic variants associated with these traits, we conducted meta-analyses of seven RBC phenotypes in 130,273 multi-ethnic individuals from~studies genotyped on an exome array. After conditional analyses and replication in 27,480 independent individuals, we identified 16 new RBC variants. We found low-frequency missense variants in MAP1A (rs55707100, minor allele frequency [MAF] = 3.3\%, p = 2~{\texttimes}~10(-10) for hemoglobin [HGB]) and HNF4A (rs1800961, MAF = 2.4\%, p < 3~{\texttimes} 10(-8) for hematocrit [HCT] and HGB). In African Americans, we identified a nonsense variant in CD36 associated with higher RBC distribution width (rs3211938, MAF = 8.7\%, p = 7~{\texttimes} 10(-11)) and showed that it is associated with lower CD36 expression and strong allelic imbalance in ex~vivo differentiated human erythroblasts. We also identified a rare missense variant in ALAS2 (rs201062903, MAF = 0.2\%) associated with lower mean corpuscular volume and mean corpuscular hemoglobin (p < 8~{\texttimes} 10(-9)). Mendelian mutations in ALAS2 are a cause of sideroblastic anemia and erythropoietic protoporphyria. Gene-based testing highlighted three rare missense variants in PKLR, a gene mutated in Mendelian non-spherocytic hemolytic anemia, associated with HGB and HCT (SKAT p < 8~{\texttimes} 10(-7)). These rare, low-frequency, and common RBC variants showed pleiotropy, being also associated with platelet, white blood cell, and lipid traits. Our association results and functional annotation suggest the involvement of new genes in human erythropoiesis. We also confirm that rare and low-frequency variants play a role in the architecture of complex human traits, although their phenotypic effect is generally smaller than originally anticipated.

}, issn = {1537-6605}, doi = {10.1016/j.ajhg.2016.05.007}, author = {Chami, Nathalie and Chen, Ming-Huei and Slater, Andrew J and Eicher, John D and Evangelou, Evangelos and Tajuddin, Salman M and Love-Gregory, Latisha and Kacprowski, Tim and Schick, Ursula M and Nomura, Akihiro and Giri, Ayush and Lessard, Samuel and Brody, Jennifer A and Schurmann, Claudia and Pankratz, Nathan and Yanek, Lisa R and Manichaikul, Ani and Pazoki, Raha and Mihailov, Evelin and Hill, W David and Raffield, Laura M and Burt, Amber and Bartz, Traci M and Becker, Diane M and Becker, Lewis C and Boerwinkle, Eric and Bork-Jensen, Jette and Bottinger, Erwin P and O{\textquoteright}Donoghue, Michelle L and Crosslin, David R and de Denus, Simon and Dub{\'e}, Marie-Pierre and Elliott, Paul and Engstr{\"o}m, Gunnar and Evans, Michele K and Floyd, James S and Fornage, Myriam and Gao, He and Greinacher, Andreas and Gudnason, Vilmundur and Hansen, Torben and Harris, Tamara B and Hayward, Caroline and Hernesniemi, Jussi and Highland, Heather M and Hirschhorn, Joel N and Hofman, Albert and Irvin, Marguerite R and K{\"a}h{\"o}nen, Mika and Lange, Ethan and Launer, Lenore J and Lehtim{\"a}ki, Terho and Li, Jin and Liewald, David C M and Linneberg, Allan and Liu, Yongmei and Lu, Yingchang and Lyytik{\"a}inen, Leo-Pekka and M{\"a}gi, Reedik and Mathias, Rasika A and Melander, Olle and Metspalu, Andres and Mononen, Nina and Nalls, Mike A and Nickerson, Deborah A and Nikus, Kjell and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Chris J and Orho-Melander, Marju and Pedersen, Oluf and Petersmann, Astrid and Polfus, Linda and Psaty, Bruce M and Raitakari, Olli T and Raitoharju, Emma and Richard, Melissa and Rice, Kenneth M and Rivadeneira, Fernando and Rotter, Jerome I and Schmidt, Frank and Smith, Albert Vernon and Starr, John M and Taylor, Kent D and Teumer, Alexander and Thuesen, Betina H and Torstenson, Eric S and Tracy, Russell P and Tzoulaki, Ioanna and Zakai, Neil A and Vacchi-Suzzi, Caterina and van Duijn, Cornelia M and van Rooij, Frank J A and Cushman, Mary and Deary, Ian J and Velez Edwards, Digna R and Vergnaud, Anne-Claire and Wallentin, Lars and Waterworth, Dawn M and White, Harvey D and Wilson, James G and Zonderman, Alan B and Kathiresan, Sekar and Grarup, Niels and Esko, T{\~o}nu and Loos, Ruth J F and Lange, Leslie A and Faraday, Nauder and Abumrad, Nada A and Edwards, Todd L and Ganesh, Santhi K and Auer, Paul L and Johnson, Andrew D and Reiner, Alexander P and Lettre, Guillaume} } @article {7146, title = {Large-Scale Exome-wide Association Analysis Identifies Loci for White Blood Cell Traits and Pleiotropy with Immune-Mediated Diseases.}, journal = {Am J Hum Genet}, volume = {99}, year = {2016}, month = {2016 Jul 7}, pages = {22-39}, abstract = {

White blood cells play diverse roles in innate and adaptive immunity. Genetic association analyses of phenotypic variation in circulating white blood cell (WBC) counts from large samples of otherwise healthy individuals can provide insights into genes and biologic pathways involved in production, differentiation, or clearance of particular WBC lineages (myeloid, lymphoid) and also potentially inform the genetic basis of autoimmune, allergic, and blood diseases. We performed an exome array-based meta-analysis of total WBC and subtype counts (neutrophils, monocytes, lymphocytes, basophils, and eosinophils) in a multi-ancestry discovery and replication sample of~\~{}157,622 individuals from 25 studies. We identified 16 common variants (8 of which were coding variants) associated with one or more WBC traits, the majority of which are pleiotropically associated with autoimmune diseases. Based on functional annotation, these loci included genes encoding surface markers of myeloid, lymphoid, or hematopoietic stem cell differentiation (CD69, CD33, CD87), transcription factors regulating lineage specification during hematopoiesis (ASXL1, IRF8, IKZF1, JMJD1C, ETS2-PSMG1), and molecules involved in neutrophil clearance/apoptosis (C10orf54, LTA), adhesion (TNXB), or centrosome and microtubule structure/function (KIF9, TUBD1). Together with recent reports of somatic ASXL1 mutations among individuals with idiopathic cytopenias or clonal hematopoiesis of undetermined significance, the identification of a common regulatory 3{\textquoteright} UTR variant of ASXL1 suggests that both germline and somatic ASXL1 mutations contribute to lower blood counts in otherwise asymptomatic individuals. These association results shed light on genetic mechanisms that regulate circulating WBC counts and suggest a prominent shared genetic architecture with inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.

}, issn = {1537-6605}, doi = {10.1016/j.ajhg.2016.05.003}, author = {Tajuddin, Salman M and Schick, Ursula M and Eicher, John D and Chami, Nathalie and Giri, Ayush and Brody, Jennifer A and Hill, W David and Kacprowski, Tim and Li, Jin and Lyytik{\"a}inen, Leo-Pekka and Manichaikul, Ani and Mihailov, Evelin and O{\textquoteright}Donoghue, Michelle L and Pankratz, Nathan and Pazoki, Raha and Polfus, Linda M and Smith, Albert Vernon and Schurmann, Claudia and Vacchi-Suzzi, Caterina and Waterworth, Dawn M and Evangelou, Evangelos and Yanek, Lisa R and Burt, Amber and Chen, Ming-Huei and van Rooij, Frank J A and Floyd, James S and Greinacher, Andreas and Harris, Tamara B and Highland, Heather M and Lange, Leslie A and Liu, Yongmei and M{\"a}gi, Reedik and Nalls, Mike A and Mathias, Rasika A and Nickerson, Deborah A and Nikus, Kjell and Starr, John M and Tardif, Jean-Claude and Tzoulaki, Ioanna and Velez Edwards, Digna R and Wallentin, Lars and Bartz, Traci M and Becker, Lewis C and Denny, Joshua C and Raffield, Laura M and Rioux, John D and Friedrich, Nele and Fornage, Myriam and Gao, He and Hirschhorn, Joel N and Liewald, David C M and Rich, Stephen S and Uitterlinden, Andre and Bastarache, Lisa and Becker, Diane M and Boerwinkle, Eric and de Denus, Simon and Bottinger, Erwin P and Hayward, Caroline and Hofman, Albert and Homuth, Georg and Lange, Ethan and Launer, Lenore J and Lehtim{\"a}ki, Terho and Lu, Yingchang and Metspalu, Andres and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Chris J and Quarells, Rakale C and Richard, Melissa and Torstenson, Eric S and Taylor, Kent D and Vergnaud, Anne-Claire and Zonderman, Alan B and Crosslin, David R and Deary, Ian J and D{\"o}rr, Marcus and Elliott, Paul and Evans, Michele K and Gudnason, Vilmundur and K{\"a}h{\"o}nen, Mika and Psaty, Bruce M and Rotter, Jerome I and Slater, Andrew J and Dehghan, Abbas and White, Harvey D and Ganesh, Santhi K and Loos, Ruth J F and Esko, T{\~o}nu and Faraday, Nauder and Wilson, James G and Cushman, Mary and Johnson, Andrew D and Edwards, Todd L and Zakai, Neil A and Lettre, Guillaume and Reiner, Alex P and Auer, Paul L} } @article {7139, title = {Platelet-Related Variants Identified by Exomechip Meta-analysis in 157,293 Individuals.}, journal = {Am J Hum Genet}, volume = {99}, year = {2016}, month = {2016 Jul 7}, pages = {40-55}, abstract = {

Platelet production, maintenance, and clearance are tightly controlled processes indicative of platelets{\textquoteright} important roles in hemostasis and thrombosis. Platelets are common targets for primary and secondary prevention of several conditions. They are monitored clinically by complete blood counts, specifically with measurements of platelet count (PLT) and mean platelet volume (MPV). Identifying genetic effects on PLT and MPV can provide mechanistic insights into platelet biology and their role in disease. Therefore, we formed the Blood Cell Consortium (BCX) to perform a large-scale meta-analysis of Exomechip association results for PLT and MPV in 157,293 and 57,617 individuals, respectively. Using the low-frequency/rare coding variant-enriched Exomechip genotyping array, we sought to identify genetic variants associated with PLT and MPV. In addition to confirming 47 known PLT and 20 known MPV associations, we identified 32 PLT and 18 MPV associations not previously observed in the literature across the allele frequency spectrum, including rare large effect (FCER1A), low-frequency (IQGAP2, MAP1A, LY75), and common (ZMIZ2, SMG6, PEAR1, ARFGAP3/PACSIN2) variants. Several variants associated with PLT/MPV (PEAR1, MRVI1, PTGES3) were also associated with platelet reactivity. In concurrent BCX analyses, there was overlap of platelet-associated variants with red (MAP1A, TMPRSS6, ZMIZ2) and white (PEAR1, ZMIZ2, LY75) blood cell traits, suggesting common regulatory pathways with shared genetic architecture among these hematopoietic lineages. Our large-scale Exomechip analyses identified previously undocumented associations with platelet traits and further indicate that several complex quantitative hematological, lipid, and cardiovascular traits share genetic factors.

}, issn = {1537-6605}, doi = {10.1016/j.ajhg.2016.05.005}, author = {Eicher, John D and Chami, Nathalie and Kacprowski, Tim and Nomura, Akihiro and Chen, Ming-Huei and Yanek, Lisa R and Tajuddin, Salman M and Schick, Ursula M and Slater, Andrew J and Pankratz, Nathan and Polfus, Linda and Schurmann, Claudia and Giri, Ayush and Brody, Jennifer A and Lange, Leslie A and Manichaikul, Ani and Hill, W David and Pazoki, Raha and Elliot, Paul and Evangelou, Evangelos and Tzoulaki, Ioanna and Gao, He and Vergnaud, Anne-Claire and Mathias, Rasika A and Becker, Diane M and Becker, Lewis C and Burt, Amber and Crosslin, David R and Lyytik{\"a}inen, Leo-Pekka and Nikus, Kjell and Hernesniemi, Jussi and K{\"a}h{\"o}nen, Mika and Raitoharju, Emma and Mononen, Nina and Raitakari, Olli T and Lehtim{\"a}ki, Terho and Cushman, Mary and Zakai, Neil A and Nickerson, Deborah A and Raffield, Laura M and Quarells, Rakale and Willer, Cristen J and Peloso, Gina M and Abecasis, Goncalo R and Liu, Dajiang J and Deloukas, Panos and Samani, Nilesh J and Schunkert, Heribert and Erdmann, Jeanette and Fornage, Myriam and Richard, Melissa and Tardif, Jean-Claude and Rioux, John D and Dub{\'e}, Marie-Pierre and de Denus, Simon and Lu, Yingchang and Bottinger, Erwin P and Loos, Ruth J F and Smith, Albert Vernon and Harris, Tamara B and Launer, Lenore J and Gudnason, Vilmundur and Velez Edwards, Digna R and Torstenson, Eric S and Liu, Yongmei and Tracy, Russell P and Rotter, Jerome I and Rich, Stephen S and Highland, Heather M and Boerwinkle, Eric and Li, Jin and Lange, Ethan and Wilson, James G and Mihailov, Evelin and M{\"a}gi, Reedik and Hirschhorn, Joel and Metspalu, Andres and Esko, T{\~o}nu and Vacchi-Suzzi, Caterina and Nalls, Mike A and Zonderman, Alan B and Evans, Michele K and Engstr{\"o}m, Gunnar and Orho-Melander, Marju and Melander, Olle and O{\textquoteright}Donoghue, Michelle L and Waterworth, Dawn M and Wallentin, Lars and White, Harvey D and Floyd, James S and Bartz, Traci M and Rice, Kenneth M and Psaty, Bruce M and Starr, J M and Liewald, David C M and Hayward, Caroline and Deary, Ian J and Greinacher, Andreas and V{\"o}lker, Uwe and Thiele, Thomas and V{\"o}lzke, Henry and van Rooij, Frank J A and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Franco, Oscar H and Dehghan, Abbas and Edwards, Todd L and Ganesh, Santhi K and Kathiresan, Sekar and Faraday, Nauder and Auer, Paul L and Reiner, Alex P and Lettre, Guillaume and Johnson, Andrew D} } @article {7263, title = {Whole-Exome Sequencing Identifies Loci Associated with Blood Cell Traits and Reveals a Role for Alternative GFI1B Splice Variants in Human Hematopoiesis.}, journal = {Am J Hum Genet}, volume = {99}, year = {2016}, month = {2016 Sep 01}, pages = {785}, issn = {1537-6605}, doi = {10.1016/j.ajhg.2016.08.002}, author = {Polfus, Linda M and Khajuria, Rajiv K and Schick, Ursula M and Pankratz, Nathan and Pazoki, Raha and Brody, Jennifer A and Chen, Ming-Huei and Auer, Paul L and Floyd, James S and Huang, Jie and Lange, Leslie and van Rooij, Frank J A and Gibbs, Richard A and Metcalf, Ginger and Muzny, Donna and Veeraraghavan, Narayanan and Walter, Klaudia and Chen, Lu and Yanek, Lisa and Becker, Lewis C and Peloso, Gina M and Wakabayashi, Aoi and Kals, Mart and Metspalu, Andres and Esko, T{\~o}nu and Fox, Keolu and Wallace, Robert and Franceschini, Nora and Matijevic, Nena and Rice, Kenneth M and Bartz, Traci M and Lyytik{\"a}inen, Leo-Pekka and K{\"a}h{\"o}nen, Mika and Lehtim{\"a}ki, Terho and Raitakari, Olli T and Li-Gao, Ruifang and Mook-Kanamori, Dennis O and Lettre, Guillaume and van Duijn, Cornelia M and Franco, Oscar H and Rich, Stephen S and Rivadeneira, Fernando and Hofman, Albert and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Wilson, James G and Psaty, Bruce M and Soranzo, Nicole and Dehghan, Abbas and Boerwinkle, Eric and Zhang, Xiaoling and Johnson, Andrew D and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Christopher J and Johnsen, Jill M and Reiner, Alexander P and Ganesh, Santhi K and Sankaran, Vijay G} } @article {7548, title = {Association of Mitochondrial DNA Copy Number With Cardiovascular Disease.}, journal = {JAMA Cardiol}, volume = {2}, year = {2017}, month = {2017 Nov 01}, pages = {1247-1255}, abstract = {

Importance: Mitochondrial dysfunction is a core component of the aging process and may play a key role in atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNA-CN), which represents the number of mitochondria per cell and number of mitochondrial genomes per mitochondrion, is an indirect biomarker of mitochondrial function.

Objective: To determine whether mtDNA-CN, measured in an easily accessible tissue (buffy coat/circulating leukocytes), can improve risk classification for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and help guide initiation of statin therapy for primary prevention of CVD.

Design, Setting, and Participants: Prospective, population-based cohort analysis including 21 870 participants (20 163 free from CVD at baseline) from 3 studies: Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS), Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study (ARIC), and Multiethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). The mean follow-up was 13.5 years. The study included 11 153 participants from ARIC, 4830 from CHS, and 5887 from MESA. Analysis of the data was conducted from March 10, 2014, to January 29, 2017.

Exposures: Mitochondrial DNA-CN measured from buffy coat/circulating leukocytes.

Main Outcomes and Measures: Incident CVD, which combines coronary heart disease, defined as the first incident myocardial infarction or death owing to coronary heart disease, and stroke, defined as the first nonfatal stroke or death owing to stroke.

Results: Of the 21 870 participants, the mean age was 62.4 years (ARIC, 57.9 years; MESA, 62.4 years; and CHS, 72.5 years), and 54.7\% of participants were women. The hazard ratios for incident coronary heart disease, stroke, and CVD associated with a 1-SD decrease in mtDNA-CN were 1.29 (95\% CI, 1.24-1.33), 1.11 (95\% CI, 1.06-1.16), and 1.23 (95\% CI, 1.19-1.26). The associations persisted after adjustment for traditional CVD risk factors. Addition of mtDNA-CN to the 2013 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Pooled Cohorts Equations for estimating 10-year hard atherosclerosis CVD risk was associated with improved risk classification (continuous net reclassification index, 0.194; 95\% CI, 0.130-0.258; P < .001). Mitochondrial DNA-CN further improved sensitivity and specificity for the 2013 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association recommendations on initiating statin therapy for primary prevention of ASCVD (net 221 individuals appropriately downclassified and net 15 individuals appropriately upclassified).

Conclusions and Relevance: Mitochondrial DNA-CN was independently associated with incident CVD in 3 large prospective studies and may have potential clinical utility in improving CVD risk classification.

}, issn = {2380-6591}, doi = {10.1001/jamacardio.2017.3683}, author = {Ashar, Foram N and Zhang, Yiyi and Longchamps, Ryan J and Lane, John and Moes, Anna and Grove, Megan L and Mychaleckyj, Josyf C and Taylor, Kent D and Coresh, Josef and Rotter, Jerome I and Boerwinkle, Eric and Pankratz, Nathan and Guallar, Eliseo and Arking, Dan E} } @article {7566, title = {Discovery and replication of SNP-SNP interactions for quantitative lipid traits in over 60,000 individuals.}, journal = {BioData Min}, volume = {10}, year = {2017}, month = {2017}, pages = {25}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: The genetic etiology of human lipid quantitative traits is not fully elucidated, and interactions between variants may play a role. We performed a gene-centric interaction study for four different lipid traits: low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), total cholesterol (TC), and triglycerides (TG).

RESULTS: Our analysis consisted of a discovery phase using a merged dataset of five different cohorts (n~=~12,853 to n~=~16,849 depending on lipid phenotype) and a replication phase with ten independent cohorts totaling up to 36,938 additional samples. Filters are often applied before interaction testing to correct for the burden of testing all pairwise interactions. We used two different filters: 1. A filter that tested only single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with a main effect of p~<~0.001 in a previous association study. 2. A filter that only tested interactions identified by Biofilter 2.0. Pairwise models that reached an interaction significance level of p~<~0.001 in the discovery dataset were tested for replication. We identified thirteen SNP-SNP models that were significant in more than one replication cohort after accounting for multiple testing.

CONCLUSIONS: These results may reveal novel insights into the genetic etiology of lipid levels. Furthermore, we developed a pipeline to perform a computationally efficient interaction analysis with multi-cohort replication.

}, issn = {1756-0381}, doi = {10.1186/s13040-017-0145-5}, author = {Holzinger, Emily R and Verma, Shefali S and Moore, Carrie B and Hall, Molly and De, Rishika and Gilbert-Diamond, Diane and Lanktree, Matthew B and Pankratz, Nathan and Amuzu, Antoinette and Burt, Amber and Dale, Caroline and Dudek, Scott and Furlong, Clement E and Gaunt, Tom R and Kim, Daniel Seung and Riess, Helene and Sivapalaratnam, Suthesh and Tragante, Vinicius and van Iperen, Erik P A and Brautbar, Ariel and Carrell, David S and Crosslin, David R and Jarvik, Gail P and Kuivaniemi, Helena and Kullo, Iftikhar J and Larson, Eric B and Rasmussen-Torvik, Laura J and Tromp, Gerard and Baumert, Jens and Cruickshanks, Karen J and Farrall, Martin and Hingorani, Aroon D and Hovingh, G K and Kleber, Marcus E and Klein, Barbara E and Klein, Ronald and Koenig, Wolfgang and Lange, Leslie A and Mӓrz, Winfried and North, Kari E and Charlotte Onland-Moret, N and Reiner, Alex P and Talmud, Philippa J and van der Schouw, Yvonne T and Wilson, James G and Kivimaki, Mika and Kumari, Meena and Moore, Jason H and Drenos, Fotios and Asselbergs, Folkert W and Keating, Brendan J and Ritchie, Marylyn D} } @article {7798, title = {Discovery, fine-mapping, and conditional analyses of genetic variants associated with C-reactive protein in multiethnic populations using the Metabochip in the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) study.}, journal = {Hum Mol Genet}, volume = {27}, year = {2018}, month = {2018 Aug 15}, pages = {2940-2953}, abstract = {

C-reactive protein (CRP) is a circulating biomarker indicative of systemic inflammation. We aimed to evaluate genetic associations with CRP levels among non-European-ancestry populations through discovery, fine-mapping and conditional analyses. A total of 30~503 non-European-ancestry participants from 6 studies participating in the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology study had serum high-sensitivity CRP measurements and \~{}200~000 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) genotyped on the Metabochip. We evaluated the association between each SNP and log-transformed CRP levels using multivariate linear regression, with additive genetic models adjusted for age, sex, the first four principal components of genetic ancestry, and study-specific factors. Differential linkage disequilibrium patterns between race/ethnicity groups were used to fine-map regions associated with CRP levels. Conditional analyses evaluated for multiple independent signals within genetic regions. One hundred and sixty-three unique variants in 12 loci in overall or race/ethnicity-stratified Metabochip-wide scans reached a Bonferroni-corrected P-value <2.5E-7. Three loci have no (HACL1, OLFML2B) or only limited (PLA2G6) previous associations with CRP levels. Six loci had different top hits in race/ethnicity-specific versus overall analyses. Fine-mapping refined the signal in six loci, particularly in HNF1A. Conditional analyses provided evidence for secondary signals in LEPR, IL1RN and HNF1A, and for multiple independent signals in CRP and APOE. We identified novel variants and loci associated with CRP levels, generalized known CRP associations to a multiethnic study population, refined association signals at several loci and found evidence for multiple independent signals at several well-known loci. This study demonstrates the benefit of conducting inclusive genetic association studies in large multiethnic populations.

}, issn = {1460-2083}, doi = {10.1093/hmg/ddy211}, author = {Kocarnik, Jonathan M and Richard, Melissa and Graff, Misa and Haessler, Jeffrey and Bien, Stephanie and Carlson, Chris and Carty, Cara L and Reiner, Alexander P and Avery, Christy L and Ballantyne, Christie M and LaCroix, Andrea Z and Assimes, Themistocles L and Barbalic, Maja and Pankratz, Nathan and Tang, Weihong and Tao, Ran and Chen, Dongquan and Talavera, Gregory A and Daviglus, Martha L and Chirinos-Medina, Diana A and Pereira, Rocio and Nishimura, Katie and B{\r u}zkov{\'a}, Petra and Best, Lyle G and Ambite, Jose Luis and Cheng, Iona and Crawford, Dana C and Hindorff, Lucia A and Fornage, Myriam and Heiss, Gerardo and North, Kari E and Haiman, Christopher A and Peters, Ulrike and Le Marchand, Lo{\"\i}c and Kooperberg, Charles} } @article {7924, title = {Genome-Wide Association Trans-Ethnic Meta-Analyses Identifies Novel Associations Regulating Coagulation Factor VIII and von Willebrand Factor Plasma Levels.}, journal = {Circulation}, year = {2018}, month = {2018 Nov 20}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: Factor VIII (FVIII) and its carrier protein von Willebrand factor (VWF) are associated with risk of arterial and venous thrombosis and with hemorrhagic disorders. We aimed to identify and functionally test novel genetic associations regulating plasma FVIII and VWF.

METHODS: We meta-analyzed genome-wide association results from 46,354 individuals of European, African, East Asian, and Hispanic ancestry. All studies performed linear regression analysis using an additive genetic model and associated approximately 35 million imputed variants with natural-log transformed phenotype levels. In vitro gene silencing in cultured endothelial cells was performed for candidate genes to provide additional evidence on association and function. Two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analyses were applied to test the causal role of FVIII and VWF plasma levels on the risk of arterial and venous thrombotic events.

RESULTS: We identified 13 novel genome-wide significant (p<=2.5x10) associations; 7 with FVIII levels ( FCHO2/TMEM171/TNPO1, HLA, SOX17/RP1, LINC00583/NFIB, RAB5C-KAT2A, RPL3/TAB1/SYNGR1, and ARSA) and 11 with VWF levels ( PDHB/PXK/KCTD6, SLC39A8, FCHO2/TMEM171/TNPO1, HLA, GIMAP7/GIMAP4, OR13C5/NIPSNAP, DAB2IP, C2CD4B, RAB5C-KAT2A, TAB1/SYNGR1, and ARSA), beyond 10 previously reported associations with these phenotypes. Functional validation provided further evidence of association for all loci on VWF except ARSA and DAB2IP. MR suggested causal effects of plasma FVIII activity levels on venous thrombosis and coronary artery disease risk and plasma VWF levels on ischemic stroke risk.

CONCLUSIONS: The meta-analysis identified 13 novel genetic loci regulating FVIII and VWF plasma levels, 10 of which we validated functionally. We provide some evidence for a causal role of these proteins in thrombotic events.

}, issn = {1524-4539}, doi = {10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.118.034532}, author = {Sabater-Lleal, Maria and Huffman, Jennifer E and de Vries, Paul S and Marten, Jonathan and Mastrangelo, Michael A and Song, Ci and Pankratz, Nathan and Ward-Caviness, Cavin K and Yanek, Lisa R and Trompet, Stella and Delgado, Graciela E and Guo, Xiuqing and Bartz, Traci M and Martinez-Perez, Angel and Germain, Marine and de Haan, Hugoline G and Ozel, Ayse B and Polasek, Ozren and Smith, Albert V and Eicher, John D and Reiner, Alex P and Tang, Weihong and Davies, Neil M and Stott, David J and Rotter, Jerome I and Tofler, Geoffrey H and Boerwinkle, Eric and de Maat, Moniek P M and Kleber, Marcus E and Welsh, Paul and Brody, Jennifer A and Chen, Ming-Huei and Vaidya, Dhananjay and Soria, Jos{\'e} Manuel and Suchon, Pierre and van Hylckama Vlieg, Astrid and Desch, Karl C and Kolcic, Ivana and Joshi, Peter K and Launer, Lenore J and Harris, Tamara B and Campbell, Harry and Rudan, Igor and Becker, Diane M and Li, Jun Z and Rivadeneira, Fernando and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Hofman, Albert and Franco, Oscar H and Cushman, Mary and Psaty, Bruce M and Morange, Pierre-Emmanuel and McKnight, Barbara and Chong, Michael R and Fernandez-Cadenas, Israel and Rosand, Jonathan and Lindgren, Arne and Gudnason, Vilmundur and Wilson, James F and Hayward, Caroline and Ginsburg, David and Fornage, Myriam and Rosendaal, Frits R and Souto, Juan Carlos and Becker, Lewis C and Jenny, Nancy S and M{\"a}rz, Winfried and Jukema, J Wouter and Dehghan, Abbas and Tr{\'e}gou{\"e}t, David-Alexandre and Morrison, Alanna C and Johnson, Andrew D and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Christopher J and Strachan, David P and Lowenstein, Charles J and Smith, Nicholas L} } @article {7776, title = {Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Genome-wide Interaction Analyses Reveal DPP10-Pulmonary Function Association.}, journal = {Am J Respir Crit Care Med}, year = {2018}, month = {2018 Sep 10}, abstract = {

RATIONALE: Omega-3 poly-unsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs) have anti-inflammatory properties that could benefit adults with comprised pulmonary health.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate n-3 PUFA associations with spirometric measures of pulmonary function tests (PFTs) and determine underlying genetic susceptibility.

METHODS: Associations of n-3 PUFA biomarkers (alpha-linolenic acid, eicosapentaenoic acid, docosapentaenoic acid [DPA], and docosahexaenoic acid [DHA]) were evaluated with PFTs (forced expiratory volume in the first second [FEV], forced vital capacity [FVC], and [FEV/FVC]) in meta-analyses across seven cohorts from the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology Consortium (N=16,134 of European or African ancestry). PFT-associated n-3 PUFAs were carried forward to genome-wide interaction analyses in the four largest cohorts (N=11,962) and replicated in one cohort (N=1,687). Cohort-specific results were combined using joint 2 degree-of-freedom (2df) meta-analyses of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) associations and their interactions with n-3 PUFAs.

RESULTS: DPA and DHA were positively associated with FEV1 and FVC (P<0.025), with evidence for effect modification by smoking and by sex. Genome-wide analyses identified a novel association of rs11693320-an intronic DPP10 SNP-with FVC when incorporating an interaction with DHA, and the finding was replicated (P=9.4{\texttimes}10 across discovery and replication cohorts). The rs11693320-A allele (frequency~80\%) was associated with lower FVC (P=2.1{\texttimes}10; β= -161.0mL), and the association was attenuated by higher DHA levels (P=2.1{\texttimes}10; β=36.2mL).

CONCLUSIONS: We corroborated beneficial effects of n-3 PUFAs on pulmonary function. By modeling genome-wide n-3 PUFA interactions, we identified a novel DPP10 SNP association with FVC that was not detectable in much larger studies ignoring this interaction.

}, issn = {1535-4970}, doi = {10.1164/rccm.201802-0304OC}, author = {Xu, Jiayi and Gaddis, Nathan C and Bartz, Traci M and Hou, Ruixue and Manichaikul, Ani W and Pankratz, Nathan and Smith, Albert V and Sun, Fangui and Terzikhan, Natalie and Markunas, Christina A and Patchen, Bonnie K and Schu, Matthew and Beydoun, May A and Brusselle, Guy G and Eiriksdottir, Gudny and Zhou, Xia and Wood, Alexis C and Graff, Mariaelisa and Harris, Tamara B and Ikram, M Arfan and Jacobs, David R and Launer, Lenore J and Lemaitre, Rozenn N and O{\textquoteright}Connor, George and Oelsner, Elizabeth C and Psaty, Bruce M and Ramachandran, Vasan S and Rohde, Rebecca R and Rich, Stephen S and Rotter, Jerome I and Seshadri, Sudha and Smith, Lewis J and Tiemeier, Henning and Tsai, Michael Y and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Voruganti, V Saroja and Xu, Hanfei and Zilh{\~a}o, Nuno R and Fornage, Myriam and Zillikens, M Carola and London, Stephanie J and Barr, R Graham and Dupuis, Jos{\'e}e and Gharib, Sina A and Gudnason, Vilmundur and Lahousse, Lies and North, Kari E and Steffen, Lyn M and Cassano, Patricia A and Hancock, Dana B} } @article {7988, title = {A genome-wide association study identifies new loci for factor VII and implicates factor VII in ischemic stroke etiology.}, journal = {Blood}, volume = {133}, year = {2019}, month = {2019 Feb 28}, pages = {967-977}, abstract = {

Factor VII (FVII) is an important component of the coagulation cascade. Few genetic loci regulating FVII activity and/or levels have been discovered to date. We conducted a meta-analysis of 9 genome-wide association studies of plasma FVII levels (7 FVII activity and 2 FVII antigen) among 27 495 participants of European and African ancestry. Each study performed ancestry-specific association analyses. Inverse variance weighted meta-analysis was performed within each ancestry group and then combined for a -ancestry meta-analysis. Our primary analysis included the 7 studies that measured FVII activity, and a secondary analysis included all 9 studies. We provided functional genomic validation for newly identified significant loci by silencing candidate genes in a human liver cell line (HuH7) using small-interfering RNA and then measuring messenger RNA and FVII protein expression. Lastly, we used meta-analysis results to perform Mendelian randomization analysis to estimate the causal effect of FVII activity on coronary artery disease, ischemic stroke (IS), and venous thromboembolism. We identified 2 novel ( and ) and 6 known loci associated with FVII activity, explaining 19.0\% of the phenotypic variance. Adding FVII antigen data to the meta-analysis did not result in the discovery of further loci. Silencing in HuH7 cells upregulated FVII, whereas silencing downregulated FVII. Mendelian randomization analyses suggest that FVII activity has a positive causal effect on the risk of IS. Variants at and contribute to FVII activity by regulating expression levels. FVII activity appears to contribute to the etiology of IS in the general population.

}, issn = {1528-0020}, doi = {10.1182/blood-2018-05-849240}, author = {de Vries, Paul S and Sabater-Lleal, Maria and Huffman, Jennifer E and Marten, Jonathan and Song, Ci and Pankratz, Nathan and Bartz, Traci M and de Haan, Hugoline G and Delgado, Graciela E and Eicher, John D and Martinez-Perez, Angel and Ward-Caviness, Cavin K and Brody, Jennifer A and Chen, Ming-Huei and de Maat, Moniek P M and Fr{\r a}nberg, Mattias and Gill, Dipender and Kleber, Marcus E and Rivadeneira, Fernando and Soria, Jos{\'e} Manuel and Tang, Weihong and Tofler, Geoffrey H and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and van Hylckama Vlieg, Astrid and Seshadri, Sudha and Boerwinkle, Eric and Davies, Neil M and Giese, Anne-Katrin and Ikram, M Kamran and Kittner, Steven J and McKnight, Barbara and Psaty, Bruce M and Reiner, Alex P and Sargurupremraj, Muralidharan and Taylor, Kent D and Fornage, Myriam and Hamsten, Anders and M{\"a}rz, Winfried and Rosendaal, Frits R and Souto, Juan Carlos and Dehghan, Abbas and Johnson, Andrew D and Morrison, Alanna C and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Christopher J and Smith, Nicholas L} } @article {8200, title = {Genomic and transcriptomic association studies identify 16 novel susceptibility loci for venous thromboembolism.}, journal = {Blood}, volume = {134}, year = {2019}, month = {2019 Nov 07}, pages = {1645-1657}, abstract = {

Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a significant contributor to morbidity and mortality. To advance our understanding of the biology contributing to VTE, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of VTE and a transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) based on imputed gene expression from whole blood and liver. We meta-analyzed GWAS data from 18 studies for 30 234 VTE cases and 172 122 controls and assessed the association between 12 923 718 genetic variants and VTE. We generated variant prediction scores of gene expression from whole blood and liver tissue and assessed them for association with VTE. Mendelian randomization analyses were conducted for traits genetically associated with novel VTE loci. We identified 34 independent genetic signals for VTE risk from GWAS meta-analysis, of which 14 are newly reported associations. This included 11 newly associated genetic loci (C1orf198, PLEK, OSMR-AS1, NUGGC/SCARA5, GRK5, MPHOSPH9, ARID4A, PLCG2, SMG6, EIF5A, and STX10) of which 6 replicated, and 3 new independent signals in 3 known genes. Further, TWAS identified 5 additional genetic loci with imputed gene expression levels differing between cases and controls in whole blood (SH2B3, SPSB1, RP11-747H7.3, RP4-737E23.2) and in liver (ERAP1). At some GWAS loci, we found suggestive evidence that the VTE association signal for novel and previously known regions colocalized with expression quantitative trait locus signals. Mendelian randomization analyses suggested that blood traits may contribute to the underlying risk of VTE. To conclude, we identified 16 novel susceptibility loci for VTE; for some loci, the association signals are likely mediated through gene expression of nearby genes.

}, issn = {1528-0020}, doi = {10.1182/blood.2019000435}, author = {Lindstr{\"o}m, Sara and Wang, Lu and Smith, Erin N and Gordon, William and van Hylckama Vlieg, Astrid and de Andrade, Mariza and Brody, Jennifer A and Pattee, Jack W and Haessler, Jeffrey and Brumpton, Ben M and Chasman, Daniel I and Suchon, Pierre and Chen, Ming-Huei and Turman, Constance and Germain, Marine and Wiggins, Kerri L and MacDonald, James and Braekkan, Sigrid K and Armasu, Sebastian M and Pankratz, Nathan and Jackson, Rebecca D and Nielsen, Jonas B and Giulianini, Franco and Puurunen, Marja K and Ibrahim, Manal and Heckbert, Susan R and Damrauer, Scott M and Natarajan, Pradeep and Klarin, Derek and de Vries, Paul S and Sabater-Lleal, Maria and Huffman, Jennifer E and Bammler, Theo K and Frazer, Kelly A and McCauley, Bryan M and Taylor, Kent and Pankow, James S and Reiner, Alexander P and Gabrielsen, Maiken E and Deleuze, Jean-Francois and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Chris J and Kim, Jihye and McKnight, Barbara and Kraft, Peter and Hansen, John-Bjarne and Rosendaal, Frits R and Heit, John A and Psaty, Bruce M and Tang, Weihong and Kooperberg, Charles and Hveem, Kristian and Ridker, Paul M and Morange, Pierre-Emmanuel and Johnson, Andrew D and Kabrhel, Christopher and Tr{\'e}gou{\"e}t, David-Alexandre and Smith, Nicholas L} } @article {7979, title = {A large-scale exome array analysis of venous thromboembolism.}, journal = {Genet Epidemiol}, year = {2019}, month = {2019 Jan 19}, abstract = {

Although recent Genome-Wide Association Studies have identified novel associations for common variants, there has been no comprehensive exome-wide search for low-frequency variants that affect the risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE). We conducted a meta-analysis of 11 studies comprising 8,332 cases and 16,087 controls of European ancestry and 382 cases and 1,476 controls of African American ancestry genotyped with the Illumina HumanExome BeadChip. We used the seqMeta package in R to conduct single variant and gene-based rare variant tests. In the single variant analysis, we limited our analysis to the 64,794 variants with at least 40 minor alleles across studies (minor allele frequency [MAF] ~0.08\%). We confirmed associations with previously identified VTE loci, including ABO, F5, F11, and FGA. After adjusting for multiple testing, we observed no novel significant findings in single variant or gene-based analysis. Given our sample size, we had greater than 80\% power to detect minimum odds ratios greater than 1.5 and 1.8 for a single variant with MAF of 0.01 and 0.005, respectively. Larger studies and sequence data may be needed to identify novel low-frequency and rare variants associated with VTE risk.

}, issn = {1098-2272}, doi = {10.1002/gepi.22187}, author = {Lindstr{\"o}m, Sara and Brody, Jennifer A and Turman, Constance and Germain, Marine and Bartz, Traci M and Smith, Erin N and Chen, Ming-Huei and Puurunen, Marja and Chasman, Daniel and Hassler, Jeffrey and Pankratz, Nathan and Basu, Saonli and Guan, Weihua and Gyorgy, Beata and Ibrahim, Manal and Empana, Jean-Philippe and Olaso, Robert and Jackson, Rebecca and Braekkan, Sigrid K and McKnight, Barbara and Deleuze, Jean-Francois and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Cristopher J and Jouven, Xavier and Frazer, Kelly A and Psaty, Bruce M and Wiggins, Kerri L and Taylor, Kent and Reiner, Alexander P and Heckbert, Susan R and Kooperberg, Charles and Ridker, Paul and Hansen, John-Bjarne and Tang, Weihong and Johnson, Andrew D and Morange, Pierre-Emmanuel and Tr{\'e}gou{\"e}t, David A and Kraft, Peter and Smith, Nicholas L and Kabrhel, Christopher} } @article {8050, title = {Mendelian randomization evaluation of causal effects of fibrinogen on incident coronary heart disease.}, journal = {PLoS One}, volume = {14}, year = {2019}, month = {2019}, pages = {e0216222}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: Fibrinogen is an essential hemostatic factor and cardiovascular disease risk factor. Early attempts at evaluating the causal effect of fibrinogen on coronary heart disease (CHD) and myocardial infraction (MI) using Mendelian randomization (MR) used single variant approaches, and did not take advantage of recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) or multi-variant, pleiotropy robust MR methodologies.

METHODS AND FINDINGS: We evaluated evidence for a causal effect of fibrinogen on both CHD and MI using MR. We used both an allele score approach and pleiotropy robust MR models. The allele score was composed of 38 fibrinogen-associated variants from recent GWAS. Initial analyses using the allele score used a meta-analysis of 11 European-ancestry prospective cohorts, free of CHD and MI at baseline, to examine incidence CHD and MI. We also applied 2 sample MR methods with data from a prevalent CHD and MI GWAS. Results are given in terms of the hazard ratio (HR) or odds ratio (OR), depending on the study design, and associated 95\% confidence interval (CI). In single variant analyses no causal effect of fibrinogen on CHD or MI was observed. In multi-variant analyses using incidence CHD cases and the allele score approach, the estimated causal effect (HR) of a 1 g/L higher fibrinogen concentration was 1.62 (CI = 1.12, 2.36) when using incident cases and the allele score approach. In 2 sample MR analyses that accounted for pleiotropy, the causal estimate (OR) was reduced to 1.18 (CI = 0.98, 1.42) and 1.09 (CI = 0.89, 1.33) in the 2 most precise (smallest CI) models, out of 4 models evaluated. In the 2 sample MR analyses for MI, there was only very weak evidence of a causal effect in only 1 out of 4 models.

CONCLUSIONS: A small causal effect of fibrinogen on CHD is observed using multi-variant MR approaches which account for pleiotropy, but not single variant MR approaches. Taken together, results indicate that even with large sample sizes and multi-variant approaches MR analyses still cannot exclude the null when estimating the causal effect of fibrinogen on CHD, but that any potential causal effect is likely to be much smaller than observed in epidemiological studies.

}, issn = {1932-6203}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0216222}, author = {Ward-Caviness, Cavin K and de Vries, Paul S and Wiggins, Kerri L and Huffman, Jennifer E and Yanek, Lisa R and Bielak, Lawrence F and Giulianini, Franco and Guo, Xiuqing and Kleber, Marcus E and Kacprowski, Tim and Gro{\ss}, Stefan and Petersman, Astrid and Davey Smith, George and Hartwig, Fernando P and Bowden, Jack and Hemani, Gibran and M{\"u}ller-Nuraysid, Martina and Strauch, Konstantin and Koenig, Wolfgang and Waldenberger, Melanie and Meitinger, Thomas and Pankratz, Nathan and Boerwinkle, Eric and Tang, Weihong and Fu, Yi-Ping and Johnson, Andrew D and Song, Ci and de Maat, Moniek P M and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Franco, Oscar H and Brody, Jennifer A and McKnight, Barbara and Chen, Yii-Der Ida and Psaty, Bruce M and Mathias, Rasika A and Becker, Diane M and Peyser, Patricia A and Smith, Jennifer A and Bielinski, Suzette J and Ridker, Paul M and Taylor, Kent D and Yao, Jie and Tracy, Russell and Delgado, Graciela and Trompet, Stella and Sattar, Naveed and Jukema, J Wouter and Becker, Lewis C and Kardia, Sharon L R and Rotter, Jerome I and M{\"a}rz, Winfried and D{\"o}rr, Marcus and Chasman, Daniel I and Dehghan, Abbas and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Christopher J and Smith, Nicholas L and Peters, Annette and Morrison, Alanna C} } @article {8290, title = {Burden of rare exome sequence variants in PROC gene is associated with venous thromboembolism: a population-based study.}, journal = {J Thromb Haemost}, volume = {18}, year = {2020}, month = {2020 Feb}, pages = {445-453}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: Rare coding mutations underlying deficiencies of antithrombin and proteins C and S contribute to familial venous thromboembolism (VTE). It is uncertain whether rare variants play a role in the etiology of VTE in the general population.

OBJECTIVES: We conducted a deep whole-exome sequencing (WES) study to investigate the associations between rare coding variants and the risk of VTE in two population-based prospective cohorts.

PATIENTS/METHODS: Whole-exome sequencing was performed in the Longitudinal Investigation of Thromboembolism Etiology (LITE), which combines the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study (316 incident VTE events among 3159 African Americans [AAs] and 458 incident VTEs among 7772 European Americans [EAs]) and the Cardiovascular Healthy Study (CHS; 60 incident VTEs among 1751 EAs). We performed gene-based tests of rare variants (allele frequency~<~1\%, exome-wide significance P~<~1.47~{\texttimes}~10 ) separately in each study and ancestry group, and meta-analyzed the results for the EAs in ARIC and CHS.

RESULTS: In the meta-analysis of EAs, we identified one gene, PROC, in which the burden of rare, coding variants was significantly associated with increased risk of VTE (HR~=~5.42 [3.11, 9.42] for carriers versus non-carriers, P~=~2.27~{\texttimes}~10 ). In ARIC EAs, carriers of the PROC rare variants had on average 0.75 standard deviation (SD) lower concentrations of plasma protein C and 0.28 SD higher D-dimer (P~<~.05) than non-carriers. Adjustment for low protein C status did not eliminate the association of PROC burden with VTE. In AAs, rare coding PROC variants were not associated with VTE.

CONCLUSIONS: Rare coding variants in PROC contribute to increased VTE risk in EAs in this general population sample.

}, issn = {1538-7836}, doi = {10.1111/jth.14676}, author = {Tang, Weihong and Stimson, Mary Rachel and Basu, Saonli and Heckbert, Susan R and Cushman, Mary and Pankow, James S and Folsom, Aaron R and Pankratz, Nathan} } @article {8480, title = {Mitochondrial DNA copy number can influence mortality and cardiovascular disease via methylation of nuclear DNA CpGs.}, journal = {Genome Med}, volume = {12}, year = {2020}, month = {2020 Sep 28}, pages = {84}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: Mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNA-CN) has been associated with a variety of aging-related diseases, including all-cause mortality. However, the mechanism by which mtDNA-CN influences disease is not currently understood. One such mechanism may be through regulation of nuclear gene expression via the modification of nuclear DNA (nDNA) methylation.

METHODS: To investigate this hypothesis, we assessed the relationship between mtDNA-CN and nDNA methylation in 2507 African American (AA) and European American (EA) participants from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study. To validate our findings, we assayed an additional 2528 participants from the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS) (N = 533) and Framingham Heart Study (FHS) (N = 1995). We further assessed the effect of experimental modification of mtDNA-CN through knockout of TFAM, a regulator of mtDNA replication, via CRISPR-Cas9.

RESULTS: Thirty-four independent CpGs were associated with mtDNA-CN at genome-wide significance (P < 5 {\texttimes} 10). Meta-analysis across all cohorts identified six mtDNA-CN-associated CpGs at genome-wide significance (P < 5 {\texttimes} 10). Additionally, over half of these CpGs were associated with phenotypes known to be associated with mtDNA-CN, including coronary heart disease, cardiovascular disease, and mortality. Experimental modification of mtDNA-CN demonstrated that modulation of mtDNA-CN results in changes in nDNA methylation and gene expression of specific CpGs and nearby transcripts. Strikingly, the "neuroactive ligand receptor interaction" KEGG pathway was found to be highly overrepresented in the ARIC cohort (P = 5.24 {\texttimes} 10), as well as the TFAM knockout methylation (P =~4.41 {\texttimes} 10) and expression (P =~4.30 {\texttimes} 10) studies.

CONCLUSIONS: These results demonstrate that changes in mtDNA-CN influence nDNA methylation at specific loci and result in differential expression of specific genes that may impact human health and disease via altered cell signaling.

}, issn = {1756-994X}, doi = {10.1186/s13073-020-00778-7}, author = {Castellani, Christina A and Longchamps, Ryan J and Sumpter, Jason A and Newcomb, Charles E and Lane, John A and Grove, Megan L and Bressler, Jan and Brody, Jennifer A and Floyd, James S and Bartz, Traci M and Taylor, Kent D and Wang, Penglong and Tin, Adrienne and Coresh, Josef and Pankow, James S and Fornage, Myriam and Guallar, Eliseo and O{\textquoteright}Rourke, Brian and Pankratz, Nathan and Liu, Chunyu and Levy, Daniel and Sotoodehnia, Nona and Boerwinkle, Eric and Arking, Dan E} } @article {8490, title = {The Polygenic and Monogenic Basis of Blood Traits and Diseases.}, journal = {Cell}, volume = {182}, year = {2020}, month = {2020 Sep 03}, pages = {1214-1231.e11}, abstract = {

Blood cells play essential roles in human health, underpinning physiological processes such as immunity, oxygen transport, and clotting, which when perturbed cause a significant global health burden. Here we integrate data from UK Biobank and a large-scale international collaborative effort, including data for 563,085 European ancestry participants, and discover 5,106 new genetic variants independently associated with 29 blood cell phenotypes covering a range of variation impacting hematopoiesis. We holistically characterize the genetic architecture of hematopoiesis, assess the relevance of the omnigenic model to blood cell phenotypes, delineate relevant hematopoietic cell states influenced by regulatory genetic variants and gene networks, identify novel splice-altering variants mediating the associations, and assess the polygenic prediction potential for blood traits and clinical disorders at the interface of complex and Mendelian genetics. These results show the power of large-scale blood cell trait GWAS to interrogate clinically meaningful variants across a wide allelic spectrum of human variation.

}, issn = {1097-4172}, doi = {10.1016/j.cell.2020.08.008}, author = {Vuckovic, Dragana and Bao, Erik L and Akbari, Parsa and Lareau, Caleb A and Mousas, Abdou and Jiang, Tao and Chen, Ming-Huei and Raffield, Laura M and Tardaguila, Manuel and Huffman, Jennifer E and Ritchie, Scott C and Megy, Karyn and Ponstingl, Hannes and Penkett, Christopher J and Albers, Patrick K and Wigdor, Emilie M and Sakaue, Saori and Moscati, Arden and Manansala, Regina and Lo, Ken Sin and Qian, Huijun and Akiyama, Masato and Bartz, Traci M and Ben-Shlomo, Yoav and Beswick, Andrew and Bork-Jensen, Jette and Bottinger, Erwin P and Brody, Jennifer A and van Rooij, Frank J A and Chitrala, Kumaraswamy N and Wilson, Peter W F and Choquet, Helene and Danesh, John and Di Angelantonio, Emanuele and Dimou, Niki and Ding, Jingzhong and Elliott, Paul and Esko, T{\~o}nu and Evans, Michele K and Felix, Stephan B and Floyd, James S and Broer, Linda and Grarup, Niels and Guo, Michael H and Guo, Qi and Greinacher, Andreas and Haessler, Jeff and Hansen, Torben and Howson, Joanna M M and Huang, Wei and Jorgenson, Eric and Kacprowski, Tim and K{\"a}h{\"o}nen, Mika and Kamatani, Yoichiro and Kanai, Masahiro and Karthikeyan, Savita and Koskeridis, Fotios and Lange, Leslie A and Lehtim{\"a}ki, Terho and Linneberg, Allan and Liu, Yongmei and Lyytik{\"a}inen, Leo-Pekka and Manichaikul, Ani and Matsuda, Koichi and Mohlke, Karen L and Mononen, Nina and Murakami, Yoshinori and Nadkarni, Girish N and Nikus, Kjell and Pankratz, Nathan and Pedersen, Oluf and Preuss, Michael and Psaty, Bruce M and Raitakari, Olli T and Rich, Stephen S and Rodriguez, Benjamin A T and Rosen, Jonathan D and Rotter, Jerome I and Schubert, Petra and Spracklen, Cassandra N and Surendran, Praveen and Tang, Hua and Tardif, Jean-Claude and Ghanbari, Mohsen and V{\"o}lker, Uwe and V{\"o}lzke, Henry and Watkins, Nicholas A and Weiss, Stefan and Cai, Na and Kundu, Kousik and Watt, Stephen B and Walter, Klaudia and Zonderman, Alan B and Cho, Kelly and Li, Yun and Loos, Ruth J F and Knight, Julian C and Georges, Michel and Stegle, Oliver and Evangelou, Evangelos and Okada, Yukinori and Roberts, David J and Inouye, Michael and Johnson, Andrew D and Auer, Paul L and Astle, William J and Reiner, Alexander P and Butterworth, Adam S and Ouwehand, Willem H and Lettre, Guillaume and Sankaran, Vijay G and Soranzo, Nicole} } @article {8481, title = {Trans-ethnic and Ancestry-Specific Blood-Cell Genetics in 746,667 Individuals from 5 Global Populations.}, journal = {Cell}, volume = {182}, year = {2020}, month = {2020 Sep 03}, pages = {1198-1213.e14}, abstract = {

Most loci identified by GWASs have been found in populations of European ancestry (EUR). In trans-ethnic meta-analyses for 15 hematological traits in 746,667 participants, including 184,535 non-EUR individuals, we identified 5,552 trait-variant associations at p~< 5~{\texttimes} 10, including 71 novel associations not found in EUR populations. We also identified 28 additional novel variants in ancestry-specific, non-EUR meta-analyses, including an IL7 missense variant in South Asians associated with lymphocyte count in~vivo and IL-7 secretion levels in~vitro. Fine-mapping prioritized variants annotated as functional and generated 95\% credible sets that were 30\% smaller when using the trans-ethnic as opposed to the EUR-only results. We explored the clinical significance and predictive value of trans-ethnic variants in multiple populations and compared genetic architecture and the effect of natural selection on these blood phenotypes between populations. Altogether, our results for hematological traits highlight the value of a more global representation of populations in genetic studies.

}, issn = {1097-4172}, doi = {10.1016/j.cell.2020.06.045}, author = {Chen, Ming-Huei and Raffield, Laura M and Mousas, Abdou and Sakaue, Saori and Huffman, Jennifer E and Moscati, Arden and Trivedi, Bhavi and Jiang, Tao and Akbari, Parsa and Vuckovic, Dragana and Bao, Erik L and Zhong, Xue and Manansala, Regina and Laplante, V{\'e}ronique and Chen, Minhui and Lo, Ken Sin and Qian, Huijun and Lareau, Caleb A and Beaudoin, M{\'e}lissa and Hunt, Karen A and Akiyama, Masato and Bartz, Traci M and Ben-Shlomo, Yoav and Beswick, Andrew and Bork-Jensen, Jette and Bottinger, Erwin P and Brody, Jennifer A and van Rooij, Frank J A and Chitrala, Kumaraswamynaidu and Cho, Kelly and Choquet, Helene and Correa, Adolfo and Danesh, John and Di Angelantonio, Emanuele and Dimou, Niki and Ding, Jingzhong and Elliott, Paul and Esko, T{\~o}nu and Evans, Michele K and Floyd, James S and Broer, Linda and Grarup, Niels and Guo, Michael H and Greinacher, Andreas and Haessler, Jeff and Hansen, Torben and Howson, Joanna M M and Huang, Qin Qin and Huang, Wei and Jorgenson, Eric and Kacprowski, Tim and K{\"a}h{\"o}nen, Mika and Kamatani, Yoichiro and Kanai, Masahiro and Karthikeyan, Savita and Koskeridis, Fotis and Lange, Leslie A and Lehtim{\"a}ki, Terho and Lerch, Markus M and Linneberg, Allan and Liu, Yongmei and Lyytik{\"a}inen, Leo-Pekka and Manichaikul, Ani and Martin, Hilary C and Matsuda, Koichi and Mohlke, Karen L and Mononen, Nina and Murakami, Yoshinori and Nadkarni, Girish N and Nauck, Matthias and Nikus, Kjell and Ouwehand, Willem H and Pankratz, Nathan and Pedersen, Oluf and Preuss, Michael and Psaty, Bruce M and Raitakari, Olli T and Roberts, David J and Rich, Stephen S and Rodriguez, Benjamin A T and Rosen, Jonathan D and Rotter, Jerome I and Schubert, Petra and Spracklen, Cassandra N and Surendran, Praveen and Tang, Hua and Tardif, Jean-Claude and Trembath, Richard C and Ghanbari, Mohsen and V{\"o}lker, Uwe and V{\"o}lzke, Henry and Watkins, Nicholas A and Zonderman, Alan B and Wilson, Peter W F and Li, Yun and Butterworth, Adam S and Gauchat, Jean-Fran{\c c}ois and Chiang, Charleston W K and Li, Bingshan and Loos, Ruth J F and Astle, William J and Evangelou, Evangelos and van Heel, David A and Sankaran, Vijay G and Okada, Yukinori and Soranzo, Nicole and Johnson, Andrew D and Reiner, Alexander P and Auer, Paul L and Lettre, Guillaume} } @article {8997, title = {Association of mitochondrial DNA copy number with cardiometabolic diseases.}, journal = {Cell Genom}, volume = {1}, year = {2021}, month = {2021 Oct 13}, abstract = {

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is present in multiple copies in human cells. We evaluated cross-sectional associations of whole blood mtDNA copy number (CN) with several cardiometabolic disease traits in 408,361 participants of multiple ancestries in TOPMed and UK Biobank. Age showed a threshold association with mtDNA CN: among younger participants (<65 years of age), each additional 10 years of age was associated with 0.03 standard deviation (s.d.) higher level of mtDNA CN ( = 0.0014) versus a 0.14 s.d. lower level of mtDNA CN ( = 1.82 {\texttimes} 10) among older participants (>=65 years). At lower mtDNA CN levels, we found age-independent associations with increased odds of obesity ( = 5.6 {\texttimes} 10), hypertension ( = 2.8 {\texttimes} 10), diabetes ( = 3.6 {\texttimes} 10), and hyperlipidemia ( = 6.3 {\texttimes} 10). The observed decline in mtDNA CN after 65 years of age may be a key to understanding age-related diseases.

}, issn = {2666-979X}, doi = {10.1016/j.xgen.2021.100006}, author = {Liu, Xue and Longchamps, Ryan J and Wiggins, Kerri L and Raffield, Laura M and Bielak, Lawrence F and Zhao, Wei and Pitsillides, Achilleas and Blackwell, Thomas W and Yao, Jie and Guo, Xiuqing and Kurniansyah, Nuzulul and Thyagarajan, Bharat and Pankratz, Nathan and Rich, Stephen S and Taylor, Kent D and Peyser, Patricia A and Heckbert, Susan R and Seshadri, Sudha and Cupples, L Adrienne and Boerwinkle, Eric and Grove, Megan L and Larson, Nicholas B and Smith, Jennifer A and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Sofer, Tamar and Fitzpatrick, Annette L and Fornage, Myriam and Ding, Jun and Correa, Adolfo and Abecasis, Goncalo and Psaty, Bruce M and Wilson, James G and Levy, Daniel and Rotter, Jerome I and Bis, Joshua C and Satizabal, Claudia L and Arking, Dan E and Liu, Chunyu} } @article {8838, title = {BinomiRare: A robust test for association of a rare genetic variant with a binary outcome for mixed models and any case-control proportion.}, journal = {HGG Adv}, volume = {2}, year = {2021}, month = {2021 Jul 08}, abstract = {

Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) and whole-exome sequencing studies have become increasingly available and are being used to identify rare genetic variants associated with health and disease outcomes. Investigators routinely use mixed models to account for genetic relatedness or other clustering variables (e.g., family or household) when testing genetic associations. However, no existing tests of the association of a rare variant with a binary outcome in the presence of correlated data control the type 1 error where there are (1) few individuals harboring the rare allele, (2) a small proportion of cases relative to controls, and (3) covariates to adjust for. Here, we address all three issues in developing a framework for testing rare variant association with a binary trait in individuals harboring at least one risk allele. In this framework, we estimate outcome probabilities under the null hypothesis and then use them, within the individuals with at least one risk allele, to test variant associations. We extend the BinomiRare test, which was previously proposed for independent observations, and develop the Conway-Maxwell-Poisson (CMP) test and study their properties in simulations. We show that the BinomiRare test always controls the type 1 error, while the CMP test sometimes does not. We then use the BinomiRare test to test the association of rare genetic variants in target genes with small-vessel disease (SVD) stroke, short sleep, and venous thromboembolism (VTE), in whole-genome sequence data from the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program.

}, issn = {2666-2477}, doi = {10.1016/j.xhgg.2021.100040}, author = {Sofer, Tamar and Lee, Jiwon and Kurniansyah, Nuzulul and Jain, Deepti and Laurie, Cecelia A and Gogarten, Stephanie M and Conomos, Matthew P and Heavner, Ben and Hu, Yao and Kooperberg, Charles and Haessler, Jeffrey and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Cupples, L Adrienne and Coombes, Brandon J and Seyerle, Amanda and Gharib, Sina A and Chen, Han and O{\textquoteright}Connell, Jeffrey R and Zhang, Man and Gottlieb, Daniel J and Psaty, Bruce M and Longstreth, W T and Rotter, Jerome I and Taylor, Kent D and Rich, Stephen S and Guo, Xiuqing and Boerwinkle, Eric and Morrison, Alanna C and Pankow, James S and Johnson, Andrew D and Pankratz, Nathan and Reiner, Alex P and Redline, Susan and Smith, Nicholas L and Rice, Kenneth M and Schifano, Elizabeth D} } @article {8666, title = {Sequencing of 53,831 diverse genomes from the NHLBI TOPMed Program.}, journal = {Nature}, volume = {590}, year = {2021}, month = {2021 02}, pages = {290-299}, abstract = {

The Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) programme seeks to elucidate the genetic architecture and biology of heart, lung, blood and sleep disorders, with the ultimate goal of improving diagnosis, treatment and prevention of these diseases. The initial phases of the programme focused on whole-genome sequencing of individuals with rich phenotypic data and diverse backgrounds. Here we describe the TOPMed goals and design as well as the available resources and early insights obtained from the sequence data. The resources include a variant browser, a genotype imputation server, and genomic and phenotypic data that are available through dbGaP (Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes). In the first 53,831 TOPMed samples, we detected more than 400~million single-nucleotide and insertion or deletion variants after alignment with the reference genome. Additional previously undescribed variants were detected through assembly of unmapped reads and customized analysis in highly variable loci. Among the more than 400~million detected variants, 97\% have frequencies of less than 1\% and 46\% are singletons that are present in only one individual (53\% among unrelated individuals). These rare variants provide insights into mutational processes and recent human evolutionary history. The extensive catalogue of genetic variation in TOPMed studies provides unique opportunities for exploring the contributions of rare and noncoding sequence variants to phenotypic variation. Furthermore, combining TOPMed haplotypes with modern imputation methods improves the power and reach of genome-wide association studies to include variants down to a frequency of approximately 0.01\%.

}, issn = {1476-4687}, doi = {10.1038/s41586-021-03205-y}, author = {Taliun, Daniel and Harris, Daniel N and Kessler, Michael D and Carlson, Jedidiah and Szpiech, Zachary A and Torres, Raul and Taliun, Sarah A Gagliano and Corvelo, Andr{\'e} and Gogarten, Stephanie M and Kang, Hyun Min and Pitsillides, Achilleas N and LeFaive, Jonathon and Lee, Seung-Been and Tian, Xiaowen and Browning, Brian L and Das, Sayantan and Emde, Anne-Katrin and Clarke, Wayne E and Loesch, Douglas P and Shetty, Amol C and Blackwell, Thomas W and Smith, Albert V and Wong, Quenna and Liu, Xiaoming and Conomos, Matthew P and Bobo, Dean M and Aguet, Francois and Albert, Christine and Alonso, Alvaro and Ardlie, Kristin G and Arking, Dan E and Aslibekyan, Stella and Auer, Paul L and Barnard, John and Barr, R Graham and Barwick, Lucas and Becker, Lewis C and Beer, Rebecca L and Benjamin, Emelia J and Bielak, Lawrence F and Blangero, John and Boehnke, Michael and Bowden, Donald W and Brody, Jennifer A and Burchard, Esteban G and Cade, Brian E and Casella, James F and Chalazan, Brandon and Chasman, Daniel I and Chen, Yii-Der Ida and Cho, Michael H and Choi, Seung Hoan and Chung, Mina K and Clish, Clary B and Correa, Adolfo and Curran, Joanne E and Custer, Brian and Darbar, Dawood and Daya, Michelle and de Andrade, Mariza and DeMeo, Dawn L and Dutcher, Susan K and Ellinor, Patrick T and Emery, Leslie S and Eng, Celeste and Fatkin, Diane and Fingerlin, Tasha and Forer, Lukas and Fornage, Myriam and Franceschini, Nora and Fuchsberger, Christian and Fullerton, Stephanie M and Germer, Soren and Gladwin, Mark T and Gottlieb, Daniel J and Guo, Xiuqing and Hall, Michael E and He, Jiang and Heard-Costa, Nancy L and Heckbert, Susan R and Irvin, Marguerite R and Johnsen, Jill M and Johnson, Andrew D and Kaplan, Robert and Kardia, Sharon L R and Kelly, Tanika and Kelly, Shannon and Kenny, Eimear E and Kiel, Douglas P and Klemmer, Robert and Konkle, Barbara A and Kooperberg, Charles and K{\"o}ttgen, Anna and Lange, Leslie A and Lasky-Su, Jessica and Levy, Daniel and Lin, Xihong and Lin, Keng-Han and Liu, Chunyu and Loos, Ruth J F and Garman, Lori and Gerszten, Robert and Lubitz, Steven A and Lunetta, Kathryn L and Mak, Angel C Y and Manichaikul, Ani and Manning, Alisa K and Mathias, Rasika A and McManus, David D and McGarvey, Stephen T and Meigs, James B and Meyers, Deborah A and Mikulla, Julie L and Minear, Mollie A and Mitchell, Braxton D and Mohanty, Sanghamitra and Montasser, May E and Montgomery, Courtney and Morrison, Alanna C and Murabito, Joanne M and Natale, Andrea and Natarajan, Pradeep and Nelson, Sarah C and North, Kari E and O{\textquoteright}Connell, Jeffrey R and Palmer, Nicholette D and Pankratz, Nathan and Peloso, Gina M and Peyser, Patricia A and Pleiness, Jacob and Post, Wendy S and Psaty, Bruce M and Rao, D C and Redline, Susan and Reiner, Alexander P and Roden, Dan and Rotter, Jerome I and Ruczinski, Ingo and Sarnowski, Chloe and Schoenherr, Sebastian and Schwartz, David A and Seo, Jeong-Sun and Seshadri, Sudha and Sheehan, Vivien A and Sheu, Wayne H and Shoemaker, M Benjamin and Smith, Nicholas L and Smith, Jennifer A and Sotoodehnia, Nona and Stilp, Adrienne M and Tang, Weihong and Taylor, Kent D and Telen, Marilyn and Thornton, Timothy A and Tracy, Russell P and Van Den Berg, David J and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Viaud-Martinez, Karine A and Vrieze, Scott and Weeks, Daniel E and Weir, Bruce S and Weiss, Scott T and Weng, Lu-Chen and Willer, Cristen J and Zhang, Yingze and Zhao, Xutong and Arnett, Donna K and Ashley-Koch, Allison E and Barnes, Kathleen C and Boerwinkle, Eric and Gabriel, Stacey and Gibbs, Richard and Rice, Kenneth M and Rich, Stephen S and Silverman, Edwin K and Qasba, Pankaj and Gan, Weiniu and Papanicolaou, George J and Nickerson, Deborah A and Browning, Sharon R and Zody, Michael C and Z{\"o}llner, Sebastian and Wilson, James G and Cupples, L Adrienne and Laurie, Cathy C and Jaquish, Cashell E and Hernandez, Ryan D and O{\textquoteright}Connor, Timothy D and Abecasis, Goncalo R} } @article {8713, title = {A System for Phenotype Harmonization in the NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Program.}, journal = {Am J Epidemiol}, year = {2021}, month = {2021 Apr 16}, abstract = {

Genotype-phenotype association studies often combine phenotype data from multiple studies to increase power. Harmonization of the data usually requires substantial effort due to heterogeneity in phenotype definitions, study design, data collection procedures, and data set organization. Here we describe a centralized system for phenotype harmonization that includes input from phenotype domain and study experts, quality control, documentation, reproducible results, and data sharing mechanisms. This system was developed for the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute{\textquoteright}s Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine program, which is generating genomic and other omics data for >80 studies with extensive phenotype data. To date, 63 phenotypes have been harmonized across thousands of participants from up to 17 studies per phenotype (participants recruited 1948-2012). We discuss challenges in this undertaking and how they were addressed. The harmonized phenotype data and associated documentation have been submitted to National Institutes of Health data repositories for controlled-access by the scientific community. We also provide materials to facilitate future harmonization efforts by the community, which include (1) the code used to generate the 63 harmonized phenotypes, enabling others to reproduce, modify or extend these harmonizations to additional studies; and (2) results of labeling thousands of phenotype variables with controlled vocabulary terms.

}, issn = {1476-6256}, doi = {10.1093/aje/kwab115}, author = {Stilp, Adrienne M and Emery, Leslie S and Broome, Jai G and Buth, Erin J and Khan, Alyna T and Laurie, Cecelia A and Wang, Fei Fei and Wong, Quenna and Chen, Dongquan and D{\textquoteright}Augustine, Catherine M and Heard-Costa, Nancy L and Hohensee, Chancellor R and Johnson, William Craig and Juarez, Lucia D and Liu, Jingmin and Mutalik, Karen M and Raffield, Laura M and Wiggins, Kerri L and de Vries, Paul S and Kelly, Tanika N and Kooperberg, Charles and Natarajan, Pradeep and Peloso, Gina M and Peyser, Patricia A and Reiner, Alex P and Arnett, Donna K and Aslibekyan, Stella and Barnes, Kathleen C and Bielak, Lawrence F and Bis, Joshua C and Cade, Brian E and Chen, Ming-Huei and Correa, Adolfo and Cupples, L Adrienne and de Andrade, Mariza and Ellinor, Patrick T and Fornage, Myriam and Franceschini, Nora and Gan, Weiniu and Ganesh, Santhi K and Graffelman, Jan and Grove, Megan L and Guo, Xiuqing and Hawley, Nicola L and Hsu, Wan-Ling and Jackson, Rebecca D and Jaquish, Cashell E and Johnson, Andrew D and Kardia, Sharon L R and Kelly, Shannon and Lee, Jiwon and Mathias, Rasika A and McGarvey, Stephen T and Mitchell, Braxton D and Montasser, May E and Morrison, Alanna C and North, Kari E and Nouraie, Seyed Mehdi and Oelsner, Elizabeth C and Pankratz, Nathan and Rich, Stephen S and Rotter, Jerome I and Smith, Jennifer A and Taylor, Kent D and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Weeks, Daniel E and Weiss, Scott T and Wilson, Carla G and Yanek, Lisa R and Psaty, Bruce M and Heckbert, Susan R and Laurie, Cathy C} } @article {8913, title = {Whole genome sequence analysis of platelet traits in the NHLBI trans-omics for precision medicine initiative.}, journal = {Hum Mol Genet}, year = {2021}, month = {2021 Sep 06}, abstract = {

Platelets play a key role in thrombosis and hemostasis. Platelet count (PLT) and mean platelet volume (MPV) are highly heritable quantitative traits, with hundreds of genetic signals previously identified, mostly in European ancestry populations. We here utilize whole genome sequencing from NHLBI{\textquoteright}s Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine Initiative (TOPMed) in a large multi-ethnic sample to further explore common and rare variation contributing to PLT (n = 61 200) and MPV (n = 23 485). We identified and replicated secondary signals at MPL (rs532784633) and PECAM1 (rs73345162), both more common in African ancestry populations. We also observed rare variation in Mendelian platelet related disorder genes influencing variation in platelet traits in TOPMed cohorts (not enriched for blood disorders). For example, association of GP9 with lower PLT and higher MPV was partly driven by a pathogenic Bernard-Soulier syndrome variant (rs5030764, p.Asn61Ser), and the signals at TUBB1 and CD36 were partly driven by loss of function variants not annotated as pathogenic in ClinVar (rs199948010 and rs571975065). However, residual signal remained for these gene-based signals after adjusting for lead variants, suggesting that additional variants in Mendelian genes with impacts in general population cohorts remain to be identified. Gene-based signals were also identified at several GWAS identified loci for genes not annotated for Mendelian platelet disorders (PTPRH, TET2, CHEK2), with somatic variation driving the result at TET2. These results highlight the value of whole genome sequencing in populations of diverse genetic ancestry to identify novel regulatory and coding signals, even for well-studied traits like platelet traits.

}, issn = {1460-2083}, doi = {10.1093/hmg/ddab252}, author = {Little, Amarise and Hu, Yao and Sun, Quan and Jain, Deepti and Broome, Jai and Chen, Ming-Huei and Thibord, Florian and McHugh, Caitlin and Surendran, Praveen and Blackwell, Thomas W and Brody, Jennifer A and Bhan, Arunoday and Chami, Nathalie and Vries, Paul S and Ekunwe, Lynette and Heard-Costa, Nancy and Hobbs, Brian D and Manichaikul, Ani and Moon, Jee-Young and Preuss, Michael H and Ryan, Kathleen and Wang, Zhe and Wheeler, Marsha and Yanek, Lisa R and Abecasis, Goncalo R and Almasy, Laura and Beaty, Terri H and Becker, Lewis C and Blangero, John and Boerwinkle, Eric and Butterworth, Adam S and Choquet, Helene and Correa, Adolfo and Curran, Joanne E and Faraday, Nauder and Fornage, Myriam and Glahn, David C and Hou, Lifang and Jorgenson, Eric and Kooperberg, Charles and Lewis, Joshua P and Lloyd-Jones, Donald M and Loos, Ruth J F and Min, Nancy and Mitchell, Braxton D and Morrison, Alanna C and Nickerson, Debbie and North, Kari E and O{\textquoteright}Connell, Jeffrey R and Pankratz, Nathan and Psaty, Bruce M and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Rich, Stephen S and Rotter, Jerome I and Smith, Albert V and Smith, Nicholas L and Tang, Hua and Tracy, Russell P and Conomos, Matthew P and Laurie, Cecelia A and Mathias, Rasika A and Li, Yun and Auer, Paul L and Thornton, Timothy and Reiner, Alexander P and Johnson, Andrew D and Raffield, Laura M} } @article {8779, title = {Whole-genome sequencing association analysis of quantitative red blood cell phenotypes: The NHLBI TOPMed program.}, journal = {Am J Hum Genet}, volume = {108}, year = {2021}, month = {2021 05 06}, pages = {874-893}, abstract = {

Whole-genome sequencing (WGS), a powerful tool for detecting novel coding and non-coding disease-causing variants, has largely been applied to clinical diagnosis of inherited disorders. Here we leveraged WGS data in up to 62,653 ethnically diverse participants from the NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program and assessed statistical association of variants with seven red blood cell (RBC) quantitative traits. We discovered 14 single variant-RBC trait associations at 12 genomic loci, which have not been reported previously. Several of the RBC trait-variant associations (RPN1, ELL2, MIDN, HBB, HBA1, PIEZO1, and G6PD) were replicated in independent GWAS datasets imputed to the TOPMed reference panel. Most of these discovered variants are rare/low frequency, and several are observed disproportionately among non-European Ancestry (African, Hispanic/Latino, or East Asian) populations. We identified a 3~bp indel p.Lys2169del (g.88717175_88717177TCT[4]) (common only in the Ashkenazi Jewish population) of PIEZO1, a gene responsible for the Mendelian red cell disorder hereditary xerocytosis (MIM: 194380), associated with higher mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC). In stepwise conditional analysis and in gene-based rare variant aggregated association analysis, we identified several of the variants in HBB, HBA1, TMPRSS6, and G6PD that represent the carrier state for known coding, promoter, or splice site loss-of-function variants that cause inherited RBC disorders. Finally, we applied base and nuclease editing to demonstrate that the sentinel variant rs112097551 (nearest gene RPN1) acts through a cis-regulatory element that exerts long-range control of the gene RUVBL1 which is essential for hematopoiesis. Together, these results demonstrate the utility of WGS in ethnically diverse population-based samples and gene editing for expanding knowledge of the genetic architecture of quantitative hematologic traits and suggest a continuum between complex trait and Mendelian red cell disorders.

}, keywords = {Adult, Aged, Chromosomes, Human, Pair 16, Datasets as Topic, Erythrocytes, Female, Gene Editing, Genetic Variation, Genome-Wide Association Study, HEK293 Cells, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (U.S.), Phenotype, Quality Control, Reproducibility of Results, United States}, issn = {1537-6605}, doi = {10.1016/j.ajhg.2021.04.003}, author = {Hu, Yao and Stilp, Adrienne M and McHugh, Caitlin P and Rao, Shuquan and Jain, Deepti and Zheng, Xiuwen and Lane, John and M{\'e}ric de Bellefon, S{\'e}bastian and Raffield, Laura M and Chen, Ming-Huei and Yanek, Lisa R and Wheeler, Marsha and Yao, Yao and Ren, Chunyan and Broome, Jai and Moon, Jee-Young and de Vries, Paul S and Hobbs, Brian D and Sun, Quan and Surendran, Praveen and Brody, Jennifer A and Blackwell, Thomas W and Choquet, Helene and Ryan, Kathleen and Duggirala, Ravindranath and Heard-Costa, Nancy and Wang, Zhe and Chami, Nathalie and Preuss, Michael H and Min, Nancy and Ekunwe, Lynette and Lange, Leslie A and Cushman, Mary and Faraday, Nauder and Curran, Joanne E and Almasy, Laura and Kundu, Kousik and Smith, Albert V and Gabriel, Stacey and Rotter, Jerome I and Fornage, Myriam and Lloyd-Jones, Donald M and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Smith, Nicholas L and North, Kari E and Boerwinkle, Eric and Becker, Lewis C and Lewis, Joshua P and Abecasis, Goncalo R and Hou, Lifang and O{\textquoteright}Connell, Jeffrey R and Morrison, Alanna C and Beaty, Terri H and Kaplan, Robert and Correa, Adolfo and Blangero, John and Jorgenson, Eric and Psaty, Bruce M and Kooperberg, Charles and Walton, Russell T and Kleinstiver, Benjamin P and Tang, Hua and Loos, Ruth J F and Soranzo, Nicole and Butterworth, Adam S and Nickerson, Debbie and Rich, Stephen S and Mitchell, Braxton D and Johnson, Andrew D and Auer, Paul L and Li, Yun and Mathias, Rasika A and Lettre, Guillaume and Pankratz, Nathan and Laurie, Cathy C and Laurie, Cecelia A and Bauer, Daniel E and Conomos, Matthew P and Reiner, Alexander P} } @article {8914, title = {Whole-genome sequencing in diverse subjects identifies genetic correlates of leukocyte traits: The NHLBI TOPMed program.}, journal = {Am J Hum Genet}, volume = {108}, year = {2021}, month = {2021 10 07}, pages = {1836-1851}, abstract = {

Many common and rare variants associated with hematologic traits have been discovered through imputation on large-scale reference panels. However, the majority of genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have been conducted in Europeans, and determining causal variants has proved challenging. We performed a GWAS of total leukocyte, neutrophil, lymphocyte, monocyte, eosinophil, and basophil counts generated from 109,563,748 variants in the autosomes and the X chromosome in the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program, which included data from 61,802 individuals of diverse ancestry. We discovered and replicated 7 leukocyte trait associations, including (1) the association between a chromosome X, pseudo-autosomal region (PAR), noncoding variant located between cytokine receptor genes (CSF2RA and CLRF2) and lower eosinophil count; and (2) associations between single variants found predominantly among African Americans at the S1PR3 (9q22.1) and HBB (11p15.4) loci and monocyte and lymphocyte counts, respectively. We further provide evidence indicating that the newly discovered eosinophil-lowering chromosome X PAR variant might be associated with reduced susceptibility to common allergic diseases such as atopic dermatitis and asthma. Additionally, we found a burden of very rare FLT3 (13q12.2) variants associated with monocyte counts. Together, these results emphasize the utility of whole-genome sequencing in diverse samples in identifying associations missed by European-ancestry-driven GWASs.

}, keywords = {Asthma, Biomarkers, Dermatitis, Atopic, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genome, Human, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Leukocytes, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (U.S.), Phenotype, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Prognosis, Proteome, Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive, Quantitative Trait Loci, United Kingdom, United States, Whole Genome Sequencing}, issn = {1537-6605}, doi = {10.1016/j.ajhg.2021.08.007}, author = {Mikhaylova, Anna V and McHugh, Caitlin P and Polfus, Linda M and Raffield, Laura M and Boorgula, Meher Preethi and Blackwell, Thomas W and Brody, Jennifer A and Broome, Jai and Chami, Nathalie and Chen, Ming-Huei and Conomos, Matthew P and Cox, Corey and Curran, Joanne E and Daya, Michelle and Ekunwe, Lynette and Glahn, David C and Heard-Costa, Nancy and Highland, Heather M and Hobbs, Brian D and Ilboudo, Yann and Jain, Deepti and Lange, Leslie A and Miller-Fleming, Tyne W and Min, Nancy and Moon, Jee-Young and Preuss, Michael H and Rosen, Jonathon and Ryan, Kathleen and Smith, Albert V and Sun, Quan and Surendran, Praveen and de Vries, Paul S and Walter, Klaudia and Wang, Zhe and Wheeler, Marsha and Yanek, Lisa R and Zhong, Xue and Abecasis, Goncalo R and Almasy, Laura and Barnes, Kathleen C and Beaty, Terri H and Becker, Lewis C and Blangero, John and Boerwinkle, Eric and Butterworth, Adam S and Chavan, Sameer and Cho, Michael H and Choquet, Helene and Correa, Adolfo and Cox, Nancy and DeMeo, Dawn L and Faraday, Nauder and Fornage, Myriam and Gerszten, Robert E and Hou, Lifang and Johnson, Andrew D and Jorgenson, Eric and Kaplan, Robert and Kooperberg, Charles and Kundu, Kousik and Laurie, Cecelia A and Lettre, Guillaume and Lewis, Joshua P and Li, Bingshan and Li, Yun and Lloyd-Jones, Donald M and Loos, Ruth J F and Manichaikul, Ani and Meyers, Deborah A and Mitchell, Braxton D and Morrison, Alanna C and Ngo, Debby and Nickerson, Deborah A and Nongmaithem, Suraj and North, Kari E and O{\textquoteright}Connell, Jeffrey R and Ortega, Victor E and Pankratz, Nathan and Perry, James A and Psaty, Bruce M and Rich, Stephen S and Soranzo, Nicole and Rotter, Jerome I and Silverman, Edwin K and Smith, Nicholas L and Tang, Hua and Tracy, Russell P and Thornton, Timothy A and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Zein, Joe and Mathias, Rasika A and Reiner, Alexander P and Auer, Paul L} } @article {9194, title = {Cross-Ancestry Investigation of Venous Thromboembolism Genomic Predictors.}, journal = {Circulation}, volume = {146}, year = {2022}, month = {2022 Oct 18}, pages = {1225-1242}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a life-threatening vascular event with environmental and genetic determinants. Recent VTE genome-wide association studies (GWAS) meta-analyses involved nearly 30 000 VTE cases and identified up to 40 genetic loci associated with VTE risk, including loci not previously suspected to play a role in hemostasis. The aim of our research was to expand discovery of new genetic loci associated with VTE by using cross-ancestry genomic resources.

METHODS: We present new cross-ancestry meta-analyzed GWAS results involving up to 81 669 VTE cases from 30 studies, with replication of novel loci in independent populations and loci characterization through in silico genomic interrogations.

RESULTS: In our genetic discovery effort that included 55 330 participants with VTE (47 822 European, 6320 African, and 1188 Hispanic ancestry), we identified 48 novel associations, of which 34 were replicated after correction for multiple testing. In our combined discovery-replication analysis (81 669 VTE participants) and ancestry-stratified meta-analyses (European, African, and Hispanic), we identified another 44 novel associations, which are new candidate VTE-associated loci requiring replication. In total, across all GWAS meta-analyses, we identified 135 independent genomic loci significantly associated with VTE risk. A genetic risk score of the significantly associated loci in Europeans identified a 6-fold increase in risk for those in the top 1\% of scores compared with those with average scores. We also identified 31 novel transcript associations in transcriptome-wide association studies and 8 novel candidate genes with protein quantitative-trait locus Mendelian randomization analyses. In silico interrogations of hemostasis and hematology traits and a large phenome-wide association analysis of the 135 GWAS loci provided insights to biological pathways contributing to VTE, with some loci contributing to VTE through well-characterized coagulation pathways and others providing new data on the role of hematology traits, particularly platelet function. Many of the replicated loci are outside of known or currently hypothesized pathways to thrombosis.

CONCLUSIONS: Our cross-ancestry GWAS meta-analyses identified new loci associated with VTE. These findings highlight new pathways to thrombosis and provide novel molecules that may be useful in the development of improved antithrombosis treatments.

}, keywords = {Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genome-Wide Association Study, Genomics, Humans, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Quantitative Trait Loci, Thrombosis, Venous Thromboembolism}, issn = {1524-4539}, doi = {10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.122.059675}, author = {Thibord, Florian and Klarin, Derek and Brody, Jennifer A and Chen, Ming-Huei and Levin, Michael G and Chasman, Daniel I and Goode, Ellen L and Hveem, Kristian and Teder-Laving, Maris and Martinez-Perez, Angel and A{\"\i}ssi, Dylan and Daian-Bacq, Delphine and Ito, Kaoru and Natarajan, Pradeep and Lutsey, Pamela L and Nadkarni, Girish N and de Vries, Paul S and Cuellar-Partida, Gabriel and Wolford, Brooke N and Pattee, Jack W and Kooperberg, Charles and Braekkan, Sigrid K and Li-Gao, Ruifang and Saut, No{\'e}mie and Sept, Corriene and Germain, Marine and Judy, Renae L and Wiggins, Kerri L and Ko, Darae and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Christopher J and Taylor, Kent D and Giulianini, Franco and de Andrade, Mariza and N{\o}st, Therese H and Boland, Anne and Empana, Jean-Philippe and Koyama, Satoshi and Gilliland, Thomas and Do, Ron and Huffman, Jennifer E and Wang, Xin and Zhou, Wei and Manuel Soria, Jose and Carlos Souto, Juan and Pankratz, Nathan and Haessler, Jeffery and Hindberg, Kristian and Rosendaal, Frits R and Turman, Constance and Olaso, Robert and Kember, Rachel L and Bartz, Traci M and Lynch, Julie A and Heckbert, Susan R and Armasu, Sebastian M and Brumpton, Ben and Smadja, David M and Jouven, Xavier and Komuro, Issei and Clapham, Katharine R and Loos, Ruth J F and Willer, Cristen J and Sabater-Lleal, Maria and Pankow, James S and Reiner, Alexander P and Morelli, Vania M and Ridker, Paul M and Vlieg, Astrid van Hylckama and Deleuze, Jean-Francois and Kraft, Peter and Rader, Daniel J and Min Lee, Kyung and Psaty, Bruce M and Heidi Skogholt, Anne and Emmerich, Joseph and Suchon, Pierre and Rich, Stephen S and Vy, Ha My T and Tang, Weihong and Jackson, Rebecca D and Hansen, John-Bjarne and Morange, Pierre-Emmanuel and Kabrhel, Christopher and Tr{\'e}gou{\"e}t, David-Alexandre and Damrauer, Scott M and Johnson, Andrew D and Smith, Nicholas L} } @article {9107, title = {Whole exome sequencing of 14 389 individuals from the ESP and CHARGE consortia identifies novel rare variation associated with hemostatic factors.}, journal = {Hum Mol Genet}, year = {2022}, month = {2022 May 12}, abstract = {

Plasma levels of fibrinogen, coagulation factors VII and VIII, and von Willebrand factor (vWF) are four intermediate phenotypes that are heritable and have been associated with the risk of clinical thrombotic events. To identify rare and low-frequency variants associated with these hemostatic factors, we conducted whole exome sequencing in 10 860 individuals of European ancestry (EA) and 3529 African Americans (AAs) from the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute{\textquoteright}s Exome Sequencing Project (ESP). Gene-based tests demonstrated significant associations with rare variation (minor allele frequency < 5\%) in FGG (with fibrinogen, p = 9.1x10-13), F7 (with factor VII, p = 1.3x10-72; seven novel variants), and VWF (with factor VIII and vWF; p = 3.2x10-14; one novel variant). These eight novel rare variant associations were independent of the known common variants at these loci and tended to have much larger effect sizes. In addition, one of the rare novel variants in F7 was significantly associated with an increased risk of venous thromboembolism in AAs (Ile200Ser; rs141219108; p = 4.2x10-5). After restricting gene-based analyses to only loss-of-function variants, a novel significant association was detected and replicated between factor VIII levels and a stop-gain mutation exclusive to African Americans (rs3211938) in CD36. This variant has previously been linked to dyslipidemia but not with levels of a hemostatic factor. These efforts represent the largest integration of whole exome sequence data from two national projects to identify genetic variation associated with plasma hemostatic factors.

}, issn = {1460-2083}, doi = {10.1093/hmg/ddac100}, author = {Pankratz, Nathan and Wei, Peng and Brody, Jennifer A and Chen, Ming-Huei and Vries, Paul S and Huffman, Jennifer E and Stimson, Mary Rachel and Auer, Paul L and Boerwinkle, Eric and Cushman, Mary and Maat, Moniek P M and Folsom, Aaron R and Franco, Oscar H and Gibbs, Richard A and Haagenson, Kelly K and Hofman, Albert and Johnsen, Jill M and Kovar, Christie L and Kraaij, Robert and McKnight, Barbara and Metcalf, Ginger A and Muzny, Donna and Psaty, Bruce M and Tang, Weihong and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Rooij, Jeroen G J and Dehghan, Abbas and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Christopher J and Reiner, Alex P and Morrison, Alanna C and Smith, Nicholas L} } @article {9502, title = {Association Between Whole Blood-Derived Mitochondrial DNA Copy Number, Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol, and Cardiovascular Disease Risk.}, journal = {J Am Heart Assoc}, year = {2023}, month = {2023 Oct 07}, pages = {e029090}, abstract = {

Background The relationship between mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNA CN) and cardiovascular disease remains elusive. Methods and Results We performed cross-sectional and prospective association analyses of blood-derived mtDNA CN and cardiovascular disease outcomes in 27 316 participants in 8 cohorts of multiple racial and ethnic groups with whole-genome sequencing. We also performed Mendelian randomization to explore causal relationships of mtDNA CN with coronary heart disease (CHD) and cardiometabolic risk factors (obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and hyperlipidemia). <0.01 was used for significance. We validated most of the previously reported associations between mtDNA CN and cardiovascular disease outcomes. For example, 1-SD unit lower level of mtDNA CN was associated with 1.08 (95\% CI, 1.04-1.12; <0.001) times the hazard for developing incident CHD, adjusting for covariates. Mendelian randomization analyses showed no causal effect from a lower level of mtDNA CN to a higher CHD risk (β=0.091; =0.11) or in the reverse direction (β=-0.012; =0.076). Additional bidirectional Mendelian randomization analyses revealed that low-density lipoprotein cholesterol had a causal effect on mtDNA CN (β=-0.084; <0.001), but the reverse direction was not significant (=0.059). No causal associations were observed between mtDNA CN and obesity, diabetes, and hypertension, in either direction. Multivariable Mendelian randomization analyses showed no causal effect of CHD on mtDNA CN, controlling for low-density lipoprotein cholesterol level (=0.52), whereas there was a strong direct causal effect of higher low-density lipoprotein cholesterol on lower mtDNA CN, adjusting for CHD status (β=-0.092; <0.001). Conclusions Our findings indicate that high low-density lipoprotein cholesterol may underlie the complex relationships between mtDNA CN and vascular atherosclerosis.

}, issn = {2047-9980}, doi = {10.1161/JAHA.122.029090}, author = {Liu, Xue and Sun, Xianbang and Zhang, Yuankai and Jiang, Wenqing and Lai, Meng and Wiggins, Kerri L and Raffield, Laura M and Bielak, Lawrence F and Zhao, Wei and Pitsillides, Achilleas and Haessler, Jeffrey and Zheng, Yinan and Blackwell, Thomas W and Yao, Jie and Guo, Xiuqing and Qian, Yong and Thyagarajan, Bharat and Pankratz, Nathan and Rich, Stephen S and Taylor, Kent D and Peyser, Patricia A and Heckbert, Susan R and Seshadri, Sudha and Boerwinkle, Eric and Grove, Megan L and Larson, Nicholas B and Smith, Jennifer A and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Fitzpatrick, Annette L and Fornage, Myriam and Ding, Jun and Carson, April P and Abecasis, Goncalo and Dupuis, Jos{\'e}e and Reiner, Alexander and Kooperberg, Charles and Hou, Lifang and Psaty, Bruce M and Wilson, James G and Levy, Daniel and Rotter, Jerome I and Bis, Joshua C and Satizabal, Claudia L and Arking, Dan E and Liu, Chunyu} } @article {9588, title = {Determinants of mosaic chromosomal alteration fitness.}, journal = {medRxiv}, year = {2023}, month = {2023 Oct 21}, abstract = {

Clonal hematopoiesis (CH) is characterized by the acquisition of a somatic mutation in a hematopoietic stem cell that results in a clonal expansion. These driver mutations can be single nucleotide variants in cancer driver genes or larger structural rearrangements called mosaic chromosomal alterations (mCAs). The factors that influence the variations in mCA fitness and ultimately result in different clonal expansion rates are not well-understood. We used the Passenger-Approximated Clonal Expansion Rate (PACER) method to estimate clonal expansion rate for 6,381 individuals in the NHLBI TOPMed cohort with gain, loss, and copy-neutral loss of heterozygosity mCAs. Our estimates of mCA fitness were correlated (R = 0.49) with an alternative approach that estimated fitness of mCAs in the UK Biobank using a theoretical probability distribution. Individuals with lymphoid-associated mCAs had a significantly higher white blood cell count and faster clonal expansion rate. In a cross-sectional analysis, genome-wide association study of estimates of mCA expansion rate identified , , and locus variants as modulators of mCA clonal expansion rate.

}, doi = {10.1101/2023.10.20.23297280}, author = {Pershad, Yash and Mack, Taralynn and Poisner, Hannah and Jakubek, Yasminka A and Stilp, Adrienne M and Mitchell, Braxton D and Lewis, Joshua P and Boerwinkle, Eric and Loos, Ruth J and Chami, Nathalie and Wang, Zhe and Barnes, Kathleen and Pankratz, Nathan and Fornage, Myriam and Redline, Susan and Psaty, Bruce M and Bis, Joshua C and Shojaie, Ali and Silverman, Edwin K and Cho, Michael H and Yun, Jeong and DeMeo, Dawn and Levy, Daniel and Johnson, Andrew and Mathias, Rasika and Taub, Margaret and Arnett, Donna and North, Kari and Raffield, Laura M and Carson, April and Doyle, Margaret F and Rich, Stephen S and Rotter, Jerome I and Guo, Xiuqing and Cox, Nancy and Roden, Dan M and Franceschini, Nora and Desai, Pinkal and Reiner, Alex and Auer, Paul L and Scheet, Paul and Jaiswal, Siddhartha and Weinstock, Joshua S and Bick, Alexander G} } @article {9538, title = {Mosaic chromosomal alterations in blood across ancestries using whole-genome sequencing.}, journal = {Nat Genet}, volume = {55}, year = {2023}, month = {2023 Nov}, pages = {1912-1919}, abstract = {

Megabase-scale mosaic chromosomal alterations (mCAs) in blood are prognostic markers for a host of human diseases. Here, to gain a better understanding of mCA rates in genetically diverse populations, we analyzed whole-genome sequencing data from 67,390 individuals from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine program. We observed higher sensitivity with whole-genome sequencing data, compared with array-based data, in uncovering mCAs at low mutant cell fractions and found that individuals of European ancestry have the highest rates of autosomal mCAs and the lowest rates of chromosome X mCAs, compared with individuals of African or Hispanic ancestry. Although further studies in diverse populations will be needed to replicate our findings, we report three loci associated with loss of chromosome X, associations between autosomal mCAs and rare variants in DCPS, ADM17, PPP1R16B and TET2 and ancestry-specific variants in ATM and MPL with mCAs in cis.

}, keywords = {Black People, Genome, Human, Genome-Wide Association Study, Hispanic or Latino, Humans, Mosaicism, Precision Medicine}, issn = {1546-1718}, doi = {10.1038/s41588-023-01553-1}, author = {Jakubek, Yasminka A and Zhou, Ying and Stilp, Adrienne and Bacon, Jason and Wong, Justin W and Ozcan, Zuhal and Arnett, Donna and Barnes, Kathleen and Bis, Joshua C and Boerwinkle, Eric and Brody, Jennifer A and Carson, April P and Chasman, Daniel I and Chen, Jiawen and Cho, Michael and Conomos, Matthew P and Cox, Nancy and Doyle, Margaret F and Fornage, Myriam and Guo, Xiuqing and Kardia, Sharon L R and Lewis, Joshua P and Loos, Ruth J F and Ma, Xiaolong and Machiela, Mitchell J and Mack, Taralynn M and Mathias, Rasika A and Mitchell, Braxton D and Mychaleckyj, Josyf C and North, Kari and Pankratz, Nathan and Peyser, Patricia A and Preuss, Michael H and Psaty, Bruce and Raffield, Laura M and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Redline, Susan and Rich, Stephen S and Rotter, Jerome I and Silverman, Edwin K and Smith, Jennifer A and Smith, Aaron P and Taub, Margaret and Taylor, Kent D and Yun, Jeong and Li, Yun and Desai, Pinkal and Bick, Alexander G and Reiner, Alexander P and Scheet, Paul and Auer, Paul L} } @article {9449, title = {Whole genome analysis of plasma fibrinogen reveals population-differentiated genetic regulators with putative liver roles.}, journal = {medRxiv}, year = {2023}, month = {2023 Jun 12}, abstract = {

UNLABELLED: Genetic studies have identified numerous regions associated with plasma fibrinogen levels in Europeans, yet missing heritability and limited inclusion of non-Europeans necessitates further studies with improved power and sensitivity. Compared with array-based genotyping, whole genome sequencing (WGS) data provides better coverage of the genome and better representation of non-European variants. To better understand the genetic landscape regulating plasma fibrinogen levels, we meta-analyzed WGS data from the NHLBI{\textquoteright}s Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program (n=32,572), with array-based genotype data from the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium (n=131,340) imputed to the TOPMed or Haplotype Reference Consortium panel. We identified 18 loci that have not been identified in prior genetic studies of fibrinogen. Of these, four are driven by common variants of small effect with reported MAF at least 10\% higher in African populations. Three ( , and signals contain predicted deleterious missense variants. Two loci, and , each harbor two conditionally distinct, non-coding variants. The gene region encoding the protein chain subunits ( ), contains 7 distinct signals, including one novel signal driven by rs28577061, a variant common (MAF=0.180) in African reference panels but extremely rare (MAF=0.008) in Europeans. Through phenome-wide association studies in the VA Million Veteran Program, we found associations between fibrinogen polygenic risk scores and thrombotic and inflammatory disease phenotypes, including an association with gout. Our findings demonstrate the utility of WGS to augment genetic discovery in diverse populations and offer new insights for putative mechanisms of fibrinogen regulation.

KEY POINTS: Largest and most diverse genetic study of plasma fibrinogen identifies 54 regions (18 novel), housing 69 conditionally distinct variants (20 novel).Sufficient power achieved to identify signal driven by African population variant.Links to (1) liver enzyme, blood cell and lipid genetic signals, (2) liver regulatory elements, and (3) thrombotic and inflammatory disease.

}, doi = {10.1101/2023.06.07.23291095}, author = {Huffman, Jennifer E and Nicolas, Jayna and Hahn, Julie and Heath, Adam S and Raffield, Laura M and Yanek, Lisa R and Brody, Jennifer A and Thibord, Florian and Almasy, Laura and Bartz, Traci M and Bielak, Lawrence F and Bowler, Russell P and Carrasquilla, Germ{\'a}n D and Chasman, Daniel I and Chen, Ming-Huei and Emmert, David B and Ghanbari, Mohsen and Haessle, Jeffery and Hottenga, Jouke-Jan and Kleber, Marcus E and Le, Ngoc-Quynh and Lee, Jiwon and Lewis, Joshua P and Li-Gao, Ruifang and Luan, Jian{\textquoteright}an and Malmberg, Anni and Mangino, Massimo and Marioni, Riccardo E and Martinez-Perez, Angel and Pankratz, Nathan and Polasek, Ozren and Richmond, Anne and Rodriguez, Benjamin At and Rotter, Jerome I and Steri, Maristella and Suchon, Pierre and Trompet, Stella and Weiss, Stefan and Zare, Marjan and Auer, Paul and Cho, Michael H and Christofidou, Paraskevi and Davies, Gail and de Geus, Eco and Deleuze, Jean-Francois and Delgado, Graciela E and Ekunwe, Lynette and Faraday, Nauder and G{\"o}gele, Martin and Greinacher, Andreas and He, Gao and Howard, Tom and Joshi, Peter K and Kilpel{\"a}inen, Tuomas O and Lahti, Jari and Linneberg, Allan and Naitza, Silvia and Noordam, Raymond and Pa{\"u}ls-Verg{\'e}s, Ferran and Rich, Stephen S and Rosendaal, Frits R and Rudan, Igor and Ryan, Kathleen A and Souto, Juan Carlos and van Rooij, Frank Ja and Wang, Heming and Zhao, Wei and Becker, Lewis C and Beswick, Andrew and Brown, Michael R and Cade, Brian E and Campbell, Harry and Cho, Kelly and Crapo, James D and Curran, Joanne E and de Maat, Moniek Pm and Doyle, Margaret and Elliott, Paul and Floyd, James S and Fuchsberger, Christian and Grarup, Niels and Guo, Xiuqing and Harris, Sarah E and Hou, Lifang and Kolcic, Ivana and Kooperberg, Charles and Menni, Cristina and Nauck, Matthias and O{\textquoteright}Connell, Jeffrey R and Orr{\`u}, Valeria and Psaty, Bruce M and R{\"a}ikk{\"o}nen, Katri and Smith, Jennifer A and Soria, Jos{\'e} Manuel and Stott, David J and van Hylckama Vlieg, Astrid and Watkins, Hugh and Willemsen, Gonneke and Wilson, Peter and Ben-Shlomo, Yoav and Blangero, John and Boomsma, Dorret and Cox, Simon R and Dehghan, Abbas and Eriksson, Johan G and Fiorillo, Edoardo and Fornage, Myriam and Hansen, Torben and Hayward, Caroline and Ikram, M Arfan and Jukema, J Wouter and Kardia, Sharon Lr and Lange, Leslie A and M{\"a}rz, Winfried and Mathias, Rasika A and Mitchell, Braxton D and Mook-Kanamori, Dennis O and Morange, Pierre-Emmanuel and Pedersen, Oluf and Pramstaller, Peter P and Redline, Susan and Reiner, Alexander and Ridker, Paul M and Silverman, Edwin K and Spector, Tim D and V{\"o}lker, Uwe and Wareham, Nick and Wilson, James F and Yao, Jie and Tr{\'e}gou{\"e}t, David-Alexandre and Johnson, Andrew D and Wolberg, Alisa S and de Vries, Paul S and Sabater-Lleal, Maria and Morrison, Alanna C and Smith, Nicholas L} } @article {9321, title = {Whole Genome Analysis of Venous Thromboembolism: the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine Program.}, journal = {Circ Genom Precis Med}, year = {2023}, month = {2023 Mar 24}, pages = {e003532}, abstract = {

Background Risk for venous thromboembolism has a strong genetic component. Whole genome sequencingfrom the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine program allowed us to look for new associations, particularly rare variants missed by standard genome-wide association studies. Methods The 3793 cases and 7834 controls (11.6\% of cases were Black, Hispanic/Latino, or Asian American) were analyzed using a single variant approach and an aggregate gene-based approach using our primary filter (included only loss-of-function and missense variants predicted to be deleterious) and our secondary filter (included all missense variants). Results Single variant analyses identified associations at 5 known loci. Aggregate gene-based analyses identified only (odds ratio, 6.2 for carriers of rare variants; =7.4{\texttimes}10) when using our primary filter. Employing our secondary variant filter led to a smaller effect size at (odds ratio, 3.8; =1.6{\texttimes}10), while excluding variants found only in rare isoforms led to a larger one (odds ratio, 7.5). Different filtering strategies improved the signal for 2 other known genes: became significant (minimum =1.8{\texttimes}10 with the secondary filter), while did not (minimum =4.4{\texttimes}10 with minor allele frequency <0.0005). Results were largely the same when restricting the analyses to include only unprovoked cases; however, one novel gene, , became significant (=4.4{\texttimes}10 using all missense variants with minor allele frequency <0.0005). Conclusions Here, we have demonstrated the importance of using multiple variant filtering strategies, as we detected additional genes when filtering variants based on their predicted deleteriousness, frequency, and presence on the most expressed isoforms. Our primary analyses did not identify new candidate loci; thus larger follow-up studies are needed to replicate the novel locus and to identify additional rare variation associated with venous thromboembolism.

}, issn = {2574-8300}, doi = {10.1161/CIRCGEN.121.003532}, author = {Seyerle, Amanda A and Laurie, Cecelia A and Coombes, Brandon J and Jain, Deepti and Conomos, Matthew P and Brody, Jennifer and Chen, Ming-Huei and Gogarten, Stephanie M and Beutel, Kathleen M and Gupta, Namrata and Heckbert, Susan R and Jackson, Rebecca D and Johnson, Andrew D and Ko, Darae and Manson, JoAnn E and McKnight, Barbara and Metcalf, Ginger A and Morrison, Alanna C and Reiner, Alexander P and Sofer, Tamar and Tang, Weihong and Wiggins, Kerri L and Boerwinkle, Eric and Andrade, Mariza de and Gabriel, Stacey B and Gibbs, Richard A and Laurie, Cathy C and Psaty, Bruce M and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Rice, Ken and Kooperberg, Charles and Pankow, James S and Smith, Nicholas L and Pankratz, Nathan} } @article {9500, title = {Whole Genome Sequencing Based Analysis of Inflammation Biomarkers in the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Consortium.}, journal = {bioRxiv}, year = {2023}, month = {2023 Sep 12}, abstract = {

Inflammation biomarkers can provide valuable insight into the role of inflammatory processes in many diseases and conditions. Sequencing based analyses of such biomarkers can also serve as an exemplar of the genetic architecture of quantitative traits. To evaluate the biological insight, which can be provided by a multi-ancestry, whole-genome based association study, we performed a comprehensive analysis of 21 inflammation biomarkers from up to 38,465 individuals with whole-genome sequencing from the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program. We identified 22 distinct single-variant associations across 6 traits - E-selectin, intercellular adhesion molecule 1, interleukin-6, lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A2 activity and mass, and P-selectin - that remained significant after conditioning on previously identified associations for these inflammatory biomarkers. We further expanded upon known biomarker associations by pairing the single-variant analysis with a rare variant set-based analysis that further identified 19 significant rare variant set-based associations with 5 traits. These signals were distinct from both significant single variant association signals within TOPMed and genetic signals observed in prior studies, demonstrating the complementary value of performing both single and rare variant analyses when analyzing quantitative traits. We also confirm several previously reported signals from semi-quantitative proteomics platforms. Many of these signals demonstrate the extensive allelic heterogeneity and ancestry-differentiated variant-trait associations common for inflammation biomarkers, a characteristic we hypothesize will be increasingly observed with well-powered, large-scale analyses of complex traits.

}, doi = {10.1101/2023.09.10.555215}, author = {Jiang, Min-Zhi and Gaynor, Sheila M and Li, Xihao and Van Buren, Eric and Stilp, Adrienne and Buth, Erin and Wang, Fei Fei and Manansala, Regina and Gogarten, Stephanie M and Li, Zilin and Polfus, Linda M and Salimi, Shabnam and Bis, Joshua C and Pankratz, Nathan and Yanek, Lisa R and Durda, Peter and Tracy, Russell P and Rich, Stephen S and Rotter, Jerome I and Mitchell, Braxton D and Lewis, Joshua P and Psaty, Bruce M and Pratte, Katherine A and Silverman, Edwin K and Kaplan, Robert C and Avery, Christy and North, Kari and Mathias, Rasika A and Faraday, Nauder and Lin, Honghuang and Wang, Biqi and Carson, April P and Norwood, Arnita F and Gibbs, Richard A and Kooperberg, Charles and Lundin, Jessica and Peters, Ulrike and Dupuis, Jos{\'e}e and Hou, Lifang and Fornage, Myriam and Benjamin, Emelia J and Reiner, Alexander P and Bowler, Russell P and Lin, Xihong and Auer, Paul L and Raffield, Laura M} }