@article {6580, title = {ADAM19 and HTR4 variants and pulmonary function: Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium Targeted Sequencing Study.}, journal = {Circ Cardiovasc Genet}, volume = {7}, year = {2014}, month = {2014 Jun}, pages = {350-8}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: The pulmonary function measures of forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) and its ratio to forced vital capacity (FVC) are used in the diagnosis and monitoring of lung diseases and predict cardiovascular mortality in the general population. Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified numerous loci associated with FEV1 and FEV1/FVC, but the causal variants remain uncertain. We hypothesized that novel or rare variants poorly tagged by GWASs may explain the significant associations between FEV1/FVC and 2 genes: ADAM19 and HTR4.

METHODS AND RESULTS: We sequenced ADAM19 and its promoter region along with the ≈21-kb portion of HTR4 harboring GWAS single-nucleotide polymorphisms for pulmonary function and analyzed associations with FEV1/FVC among 3983 participants of European ancestry from Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium. Meta-analysis of common variants in each region identified statistically significant associations (316 tests; P<1.58{\texttimes}10(-4)) with FEV1/FVC for 14 ADAM19 single-nucleotide polymorphisms and 24 HTR4 single-nucleotide polymorphisms. After conditioning on the sentinel GWASs hit in each gene (ADAM19 rs1422795, minor allele frequency=0.33 and HTR4 rs11168048, minor allele frequency=0.40], 1 single-nucleotide polymorphism remained statistically significant (ADAM19 rs13155908, minor allele frequency=0.12; P=1.56{\texttimes}10(-4)). Analysis of rare variants (minor allele frequency <1\%) using sequence kernel association test did not identify associations with either region.

CONCLUSIONS: Sequencing identified 1 common variant associated with FEV1/FVC independent of the sentinel ADAM19 GWAS hit and supports the original HTR4 GWAS findings. Rare variants do not seem to underlie GWAS associations with pulmonary function for common variants in ADAM19 and HTR4.

}, keywords = {ADAM Proteins, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Aging, Cohort Studies, Female, Genetic Variation, Genome-Wide Association Study, Genomics, Heart Diseases, Humans, Lung, Male, Middle Aged, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Sequence Analysis, DNA}, issn = {1942-3268}, doi = {10.1161/CIRCGENETICS.113.000066}, author = {London, Stephanie J and Gao, Wei and Gharib, Sina A and Hancock, Dana B and Wilk, Jemma B and House, John S and Gibbs, Richard A and Muzny, Donna M and Lumley, Thomas and Franceschini, Nora and North, Kari E and Psaty, Bruce M and Kovar, Christie L and Coresh, Josef and Zhou, Yanhua and Heckbert, Susan R and Brody, Jennifer A and Morrison, Alanna C and Dupuis, Jos{\'e}e} } @article {6555, title = {Association of levels of fasting glucose and insulin with rare variants at the chromosome 11p11.2-MADD locus: Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium Targeted Sequencing Study.}, journal = {Circ Cardiovasc Genet}, volume = {7}, year = {2014}, month = {2014 Jun}, pages = {374-382}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: Common variation at the 11p11.2 locus, encompassing MADD, ACP2, NR1H3, MYBPC3, and SPI1, has been associated in genome-wide association studies with fasting glucose and insulin (FI). In the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology Targeted Sequencing Study, we sequenced 5 gene regions at 11p11.2 to identify rare, potentially functional variants influencing fasting glucose or FI levels.

METHODS AND RESULTS: Sequencing (mean depth, 38{\texttimes}) across 16.1 kb in 3566 individuals without diabetes mellitus identified 653 variants, 79.9\% of which were rare (minor allele frequency <1\%) and novel. We analyzed rare variants in 5 gene regions with FI or fasting glucose using the sequence kernel association test. At NR1H3, 53 rare variants were jointly associated with FI (P=2.73{\texttimes}10(-3)); of these, 7 were predicted to have regulatory function and showed association with FI (P=1.28{\texttimes}10(-3)). Conditioning on 2 previously associated variants at MADD (rs7944584, rs10838687) did not attenuate this association, suggesting that there are >2 independent signals at 11p11.2. One predicted regulatory variant, chr11:47227430 (hg18; minor allele frequency=0.00068), contributed 20.6\% to the overall sequence kernel association test score at NR1H3, lies in intron 2 of NR1H3, and is a predicted binding site for forkhead box A1 (FOXA1), a transcription factor associated with insulin regulation. In human HepG2 hepatoma cells, the rare chr11:47227430 A allele disrupted FOXA1 binding and reduced FOXA1-dependent transcriptional activity.

CONCLUSIONS: Sequencing at 11p11.2-NR1H3 identified rare variation associated with FI. One variant, chr11:47227430, seems to be functional, with the rare A allele reducing transcription factor FOXA1 binding and FOXA1-dependent transcriptional activity.

}, keywords = {Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Aging, Blood Glucose, Chromosomes, Human, Pair 11, Cohort Studies, Death Domain Receptor Signaling Adaptor Proteins, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Fasting, Female, Gene Frequency, Genetic Variation, Genome-Wide Association Study, Genomics, Guanine Nucleotide Exchange Factors, Heart Diseases, Humans, Insulin, Male, Middle Aged, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Sequence Analysis, DNA}, issn = {1942-3268}, doi = {10.1161/CIRCGENETICS.113.000169}, author = {Cornes, Belinda K and Brody, Jennifer A and Nikpoor, Naghmeh and Morrison, Alanna C and Chu, Huan and Ahn, Byung Soo and Wang, Shuai and Dauriz, Marco and Barzilay, Joshua I and Dupuis, Jos{\'e}e and Florez, Jose C and Coresh, Josef and Gibbs, Richard A and Kao, W H Linda and Liu, Ching-Ti and McKnight, Barbara and Muzny, Donna and Pankow, James S and Reid, Jeffrey G and White, Charles C and Johnson, Andrew D and Wong, Tien Y and Psaty, Bruce M and Boerwinkle, Eric and Rotter, Jerome I and Siscovick, David S and Sladek, Robert and Meigs, James B} } @article {6590, title = {Association of low-frequency and rare coding-sequence variants with blood lipids and coronary heart disease in 56,000 whites and blacks.}, journal = {Am J Hum Genet}, volume = {94}, year = {2014}, month = {2014 Feb 06}, pages = {223-32}, abstract = {

Low-frequency coding DNA sequence variants in the proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin type 9 gene (PCSK9) lower plasma low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), protect against risk of coronary heart disease (CHD), and have prompted the development of a new class of therapeutics. It is uncertain whether the PCSK9 example represents a paradigm or an isolated exception. We used the "Exome Array" to genotype >200,000 low-frequency and rare coding sequence variants across the genome in 56,538 individuals (42,208 European ancestry [EA] and 14,330 African ancestry [AA]) and tested these variants for association with LDL-C, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), and triglycerides. Although we did not identify new genes associated with LDL-C, we did identify four low-frequency (frequencies between 0.1\% and 2\%) variants (ANGPTL8 rs145464906 [c.361C>T; p.Gln121*], PAFAH1B2 rs186808413 [c.482C>T; p.Ser161Leu], COL18A1 rs114139997 [c.331G>A; p.Gly111Arg], and PCSK7 rs142953140 [c.1511G>A; p.Arg504His]) with large effects on HDL-C and/or triglycerides. None of these four variants was associated with risk for CHD, suggesting that examples of low-frequency coding variants with robust effects on both lipids and CHD will be limited.

}, keywords = {1-Alkyl-2-acetylglycerophosphocholine Esterase, Adult, African Continental Ancestry Group, Aged, Alleles, Animals, Cholesterol, HDL, Cholesterol, LDL, Cohort Studies, Coronary Disease, European Continental Ancestry Group, Female, Gene Frequency, Genetic Association Studies, Genetic Code, Genetic Variation, Humans, Linear Models, Male, Mice, Mice, Inbred C57BL, Microtubule-Associated Proteins, Middle Aged, Phenotype, Sequence Analysis, DNA, Subtilisins, Triglycerides}, issn = {1537-6605}, doi = {10.1016/j.ajhg.2014.01.009}, author = {Peloso, Gina M and Auer, Paul L and Bis, Joshua C and Voorman, Arend and Morrison, Alanna C and Stitziel, Nathan O and Brody, Jennifer A and Khetarpal, Sumeet A and Crosby, Jacy R and Fornage, Myriam and Isaacs, Aaron and Jakobsdottir, Johanna and Feitosa, Mary F and Davies, Gail and Huffman, Jennifer E and Manichaikul, Ani and Davis, Brian and Lohman, Kurt and Joon, Aron Y and Smith, Albert V and Grove, Megan L and Zanoni, Paolo and Redon, Valeska and Demissie, Serkalem and Lawson, Kim and Peters, Ulrike and Carlson, Christopher and Jackson, Rebecca D and Ryckman, Kelli K and Mackey, Rachel H and Robinson, Jennifer G and Siscovick, David S and Schreiner, Pamela J and Mychaleckyj, Josyf C and Pankow, James S and Hofman, Albert and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Harris, Tamara B and Taylor, Kent D and Stafford, Jeanette M and Reynolds, Lindsay M and Marioni, Riccardo E and Dehghan, Abbas and Franco, Oscar H and Patel, Aniruddh P and Lu, Yingchang and Hindy, George and Gottesman, Omri and Bottinger, Erwin P and Melander, Olle and Orho-Melander, Marju and Loos, Ruth J F and Duga, Stefano and Merlini, Piera Angelica and Farrall, Martin and Goel, Anuj and Asselta, Rosanna and Girelli, Domenico and Martinelli, Nicola and Shah, Svati H and Kraus, William E and Li, Mingyao and Rader, Daniel J and Reilly, Muredach P and McPherson, Ruth and Watkins, Hugh and Ardissino, Diego and Zhang, Qunyuan and Wang, Judy and Tsai, Michael Y and Taylor, Herman A and Correa, Adolfo and Griswold, Michael E and Lange, Leslie A and Starr, John M and Rudan, Igor and Eiriksdottir, Gudny and Launer, Lenore J and Ordovas, Jose M and Levy, Daniel and Chen, Y-D Ida and Reiner, Alexander P and Hayward, Caroline and Polasek, Ozren and Deary, Ian J and Borecki, Ingrid B and Liu, Yongmei and Gudnason, Vilmundur and Wilson, James G and van Duijn, Cornelia M and Kooperberg, Charles and Rich, Stephen S and Psaty, Bruce M and Rotter, Jerome I and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Christopher J and Rice, Kenneth and Boerwinkle, Eric and Kathiresan, Sekar and Cupples, L Adrienne} } @article {6548, title = {Associations of NINJ2 sequence variants with incident ischemic stroke in the Cohorts for Heart and Aging in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium.}, journal = {PLoS One}, volume = {9}, year = {2014}, month = {2014}, pages = {e99798}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: Stroke, the leading neurologic cause of death and disability, has a substantial genetic component. We previously conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) in four prospective studies from the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium and demonstrated that sequence variants near the NINJ2 gene are associated with incident ischemic stroke. Here, we sought to fine-map functional variants in the region and evaluate the contribution of rare variants to ischemic stroke risk.

METHODS AND RESULTS: We sequenced 196 kb around NINJ2 on chromosome 12p13 among 3,986 European ancestry participants, including 475 ischemic stroke cases, from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, Cardiovascular Health Study, and Framingham Heart Study. Meta-analyses of single-variant tests for 425 common variants (minor allele frequency [MAF] >= 1\%) confirmed the original GWAS results and identified an independent intronic variant, rs34166160 (MAF = 0.012), most significantly associated with incident ischemic stroke (HR = 1.80, p = 0.0003). Aggregating 278 putatively-functional variants with MAF<= 1\% using count statistics, we observed a nominally statistically significant association, with the burden of rare NINJ2 variants contributing to decreased ischemic stroke incidence (HR = 0.81; p = 0.026).

CONCLUSION: Common and rare variants in the NINJ2 region were nominally associated with incident ischemic stroke among a subset of CHARGE participants. Allelic heterogeneity at this locus, caused by multiple rare, low frequency, and common variants with disparate effects on risk, may explain the difficulties in replicating the original GWAS results. Additional studies that take into account the complex allelic architecture at this locus are needed to confirm these findings.

}, keywords = {Cell Adhesion Molecules, Neuronal, European Continental Ancestry Group, Female, Genetic Association Studies, Genetic Heterogeneity, Humans, Introns, Ischemia, Male, Myocardial Infarction, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Prospective Studies, Sequence Analysis, DNA}, issn = {1932-6203}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0099798}, author = {Bis, Joshua C and DeStefano, Anita and Liu, Xiaoming and Brody, Jennifer A and Choi, Seung Hoan and Verhaaren, Benjamin F J and Debette, Stephanie and Ikram, M Arfan and Shahar, Eyal and Butler, Kenneth R and Gottesman, Rebecca F and Muzny, Donna and Kovar, Christie L and Psaty, Bruce M and Hofman, Albert and Lumley, Thomas and Gupta, Mayetri and Wolf, Philip A and van Duijn, Cornelia and Gibbs, Richard A and Mosley, Thomas H and Longstreth, W T and Boerwinkle, Eric and Seshadri, Sudha and Fornage, Myriam} } @article {6607, title = {The challenges of genome-wide interaction studies: lessons to learn from the analysis of HDL blood levels.}, journal = {PLoS One}, volume = {9}, year = {2014}, month = {2014}, pages = {e109290}, abstract = {

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have revealed 74 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) blood levels. This study is, to our knowledge, the first genome-wide interaction study (GWIS) to identify SNP{\texttimes}SNP interactions associated with HDL levels. We performed a GWIS in the Rotterdam Study (RS) cohort I (RS-I) using the GLIDE tool which leverages the massively parallel computing power of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to perform linear regression on all genome-wide pairs of SNPs. By performing a meta-analysis together with Rotterdam Study cohorts II and III (RS-II and RS-III), we were able to filter 181 interaction terms with a p-value<1 {\textperiodcentered} 10-8 that replicated in the two independent cohorts. We were not able to replicate any of these interaction term in the AGES, ARIC, CHS, ERF, FHS and NFBC-66 cohorts (Ntotal = 30,011) when adjusting for multiple testing. Our GWIS resulted in the consistent finding of a possible interaction between rs774801 in ARMC8 (ENSG00000114098) and rs12442098 in SPATA8 (ENSG00000185594) being associated with HDL levels. However, p-values do not reach the preset Bonferroni correction of the p-values. Our study suggest that even for highly genetically determined traits such as HDL the sample sizes needed to detect SNP{\texttimes}SNP interactions are large and the 2-step filtering approaches do not yield a solution. Here we present our analysis plan and our reservations concerning GWIS.

}, keywords = {Cholesterol, HDL, Female, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide}, issn = {1932-6203}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0109290}, author = {van Leeuwen, Elisabeth M and Smouter, Fran{\c c}oise A S and Kam-Thong, Tony and Karbalai, Nazanin and Smith, Albert V and Harris, Tamara B and Launer, Lenore J and Sitlani, Colleen M and Li, Guo and Brody, Jennifer A and Bis, Joshua C and White, Charles C and Jaiswal, Alok and Oostra, Ben A and Hofman, Albert and Rivadeneira, Fernando and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Boerwinkle, Eric and Ballantyne, Christie M and Gudnason, Vilmundur and Psaty, Bruce M and Cupples, L Adrienne and Jarvelin, Marjo-Riitta and Ripatti, Samuli and Isaacs, Aaron and M{\"u}ller-Myhsok, Bertram and Karssen, Lennart C and van Duijn, Cornelia M} } @article {6690, title = {Genetic diversity is a predictor of mortality in humans.}, journal = {BMC Genet}, volume = {15}, year = {2014}, month = {2014}, pages = {159}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: It has been well-established, both by population genetics theory and direct observation in many organisms, that increased genetic diversity provides a survival advantage. However, given the limitations of both sample size and genome-wide metrics, this hypothesis has not been comprehensively tested in human populations. Moreover, the presence of numerous segregating small effect alleles that influence traits that directly impact health directly raises the question as to whether global measures of genomic variation are themselves associated with human health and disease.

RESULTS: We performed a meta-analysis of 17 cohorts followed prospectively, with a combined sample size of 46,716 individuals, including a total of 15,234 deaths. We find a significant association between increased heterozygosity and survival (P = 0.03). We estimate that within a single population, every standard deviation of heterozygosity an individual has over the mean decreases that person{\textquoteright}s risk of death by 1.57\%.

CONCLUSIONS: This effect was consistent between European and African ancestry cohorts, men and women, and major causes of death (cancer and cardiovascular disease), demonstrating the broad positive impact of genomic diversity on human survival.

}, keywords = {Genome-Wide Association Study, Heterozygote, Humans, Mortality, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Proportional Hazards Models}, issn = {1471-2156}, doi = {10.1186/s12863-014-0159-7}, author = {Bihlmeyer, Nathan A and Brody, Jennifer A and Smith, Albert Vernon and Lunetta, Kathryn L and Nalls, Mike and Smith, Jennifer A and Tanaka, Toshiko and Davies, Gail and Yu, Lei and Mirza, Saira Saeed and Teumer, Alexander and Coresh, Josef and Pankow, James S and Franceschini, Nora and Scaria, Anish and Oshima, Junko and Psaty, Bruce M and Gudnason, Vilmundur and Eiriksdottir, Gudny and Harris, Tamara B and Li, Hanyue and Karasik, David and Kiel, Douglas P and Garcia, Melissa and Liu, Yongmei and Faul, Jessica D and Kardia, Sharon Lr and Zhao, Wei and Ferrucci, Luigi and Allerhand, Michael and Liewald, David C and Redmond, Paul and Starr, John M and De Jager, Philip L and Evans, Denis A and Direk, Nese and Ikram, Mohammed Arfan and Uitterlinden, Andre and Homuth, Georg and Lorbeer, Roberto and Grabe, Hans J and Launer, Lenore and Murabito, Joanne M and Singleton, Andrew B and Weir, David R and Bandinelli, Stefania and Deary, Ian J and Bennett, David A and Tiemeier, Henning and Kocher, Thomas and Lumley, Thomas and Arking, Dan E} } @article {6820, title = {Novel genetic markers associate with atrial fibrillation risk in Europeans and Japanese.}, journal = {J Am Coll Cardiol}, volume = {63}, year = {2014}, month = {2014 Apr 1}, pages = {1200-10}, abstract = {

OBJECTIVES: This study sought to identify nonredundant atrial fibrillation (AF) genetic susceptibility signals and examine their cumulative relations with AF risk.

BACKGROUND: AF-associated loci span broad genomic regions that may contain multiple susceptibility signals. Whether multiple signals exist at AF loci has not been systematically explored.

METHODS: We performed association testing conditioned on the most significant, independently associated genetic markers at 9 established AF loci using 2 complementary techniques in 64,683 individuals of European ancestry (3,869 incident and 3,302 prevalent AF cases). Genetic risk scores were created and tested for association with AF in Europeans and an independent sample of 11,309 individuals of Japanese ancestry (7,916 prevalent AF cases).

RESULTS: We observed at least 4 distinct AF susceptibility signals on chromosome 4q25 upstream of PITX2, but not at the remaining 8 AF loci. A multilocus score comprised 12 genetic markers demonstrated an estimated 5-fold gradient in AF risk. We observed a similar spectrum of risk associated with these markers in Japanese. Regions containing AF signals on chromosome 4q25 displayed a greater degree of evolutionary conservation than the remainder of the locus, suggesting that they may tag regulatory elements.

CONCLUSIONS: The chromosome 4q25 AF locus is architecturally complex and harbors at least 4 AF susceptibility signals in individuals of European ancestry. Similar polygenic AF susceptibility exists between Europeans and Japanese. Future work is necessary to identify causal variants, determine mechanisms by which associated loci predispose to AF, and explore whether AF susceptibility signals classify individuals at risk for AF and related morbidity.

}, keywords = {Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Asian Continental Ancestry Group, Atrial Fibrillation, Chromosome Mapping, Chromosomes, Human, Pair 4, Europe, European Continental Ancestry Group, Female, Genetic Markers, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Homeodomain Proteins, Humans, Japan, Male, Middle Aged, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Transcription Factors}, issn = {1558-3597}, doi = {10.1016/j.jacc.2013.12.015}, author = {Lubitz, Steven A and Lunetta, Kathryn L and Lin, Honghuang and Arking, Dan E and Trompet, Stella and Li, Guo and Krijthe, Bouwe P and Chasman, Daniel I and Barnard, John and Kleber, Marcus E and D{\"o}rr, Marcus and Ozaki, Kouichi and Smith, Albert V and M{\"u}ller-Nurasyid, Martina and Walter, Stefan and Agarwal, Sunil K and Bis, Joshua C and Brody, Jennifer A and Chen, Lin Y and Everett, Brendan M and Ford, Ian and Franco, Oscar H and Harris, Tamara B and Hofman, Albert and K{\"a}{\"a}b, Stefan and Mahida, Saagar and Kathiresan, Sekar and Kubo, Michiaki and Launer, Lenore J and Macfarlane, Peter W and Magnani, Jared W and McKnight, Barbara and McManus, David D and Peters, Annette and Psaty, Bruce M and Rose, Lynda M and Rotter, Jerome I and Silbernagel, Guenther and Smith, Jonathan D and Sotoodehnia, Nona and Stott, David J and Taylor, Kent D and Tomaschitz, Andreas and Tsunoda, Tatsuhiko and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Van Wagoner, David R and V{\"o}lker, Uwe and V{\"o}lzke, Henry and Murabito, Joanne M and Sinner, Moritz F and Gudnason, Vilmundur and Felix, Stephan B and M{\"a}rz, Winfried and Chung, Mina and Albert, Christine M and Stricker, Bruno H and Tanaka, Toshihiro and Heckbert, Susan R and Jukema, J Wouter and Alonso, Alvaro and Benjamin, Emelia J and Ellinor, Patrick T} } @article {6579, title = {Sequence variation in TMEM18 in association with body mass index: Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium Targeted Sequencing Study.}, journal = {Circ Cardiovasc Genet}, volume = {7}, year = {2014}, month = {2014 Jun}, pages = {344-9}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: Genome-wide association studies for body mass index (BMI) previously identified a locus near TMEM18. We conducted targeted sequencing of this region to investigate the role of common, low-frequency, and rare variants influencing BMI.

METHODS AND RESULTS: We sequenced TMEM18 and regions downstream of TMEM18 on chromosome 2 in 3976 individuals of European ancestry from 3 community-based cohorts (Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities, Cardiovascular Health Study, and Framingham Heart Study), including 200 adults selected for high BMI. We examined the association between BMI and variants identified in the region from nucleotide position 586 432 to 677 539 (hg18). Rare variants (minor allele frequency, <1\%) were analyzed using a burden test and the sequence kernel association test. Results from the 3 cohort studies were meta-analyzed. We estimate that mean BMI is 0.43 kg/m(2) higher for each copy of the G allele of single-nucleotide polymorphism rs7596758 (minor allele frequency, 29\%; P=3.46{\texttimes}10(-4)) using a Bonferroni threshold of P<4.6{\texttimes}10(-4). Analyses conditional on previous genome-wide association study single-nucleotide polymorphisms associated with BMI in the region led to attenuation of this signal and uncovered another independent (r(2)<0.2), statistically significant association, rs186019316 (P=2.11{\texttimes}10(-4)). Both rs186019316 and rs7596758 or proxies are located in transcription factor binding regions. No significant association with rare variants was found in either the exons of TMEM18 or the 3{\textquoteright} genome-wide association study region.

CONCLUSIONS: Targeted sequencing around TMEM18 identified 2 novel BMI variants with possible regulatory function.

}, keywords = {Adult, Aged, Aging, Body Mass Index, Cohort Studies, Female, Genetic Association Studies, Genetic Variation, Genome-Wide Association Study, Genomics, Heart Diseases, Humans, Male, Membrane Proteins, Middle Aged, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Sequence Analysis, DNA, Young Adult}, issn = {1942-3268}, doi = {10.1161/CIRCGENETICS.13.000067}, author = {Liu, Ching-Ti and Young, Kristin L and Brody, Jennifer A and Olden, Matthias and Wojczynski, Mary K and Heard-Costa, Nancy and Li, Guo and Morrison, Alanna C and Muzny, Donna and Gibbs, Richard A and Reid, Jeffrey G and Shao, Yaming and Zhou, Yanhua and Boerwinkle, Eric and Heiss, Gerardo and Wagenknecht, Lynne and McKnight, Barbara and Borecki, Ingrid B and Fox, Caroline S and North, Kari E and Cupples, L Adrienne} } @article {6583, title = {Sequencing of SCN5A identifies rare and common variants associated with cardiac conduction: Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium.}, journal = {Circ Cardiovasc Genet}, volume = {7}, year = {2014}, month = {2014 Jun}, pages = {365-73}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: The cardiac sodium channel SCN5A regulates atrioventricular and ventricular conduction. Genetic variants in this gene are associated with PR and QRS intervals. We sought to characterize further the contribution of rare and common coding variation in SCN5A to cardiac conduction.

METHODS AND RESULTS: In Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium Targeted Sequencing Study, we performed targeted exonic sequencing of SCN5A (n=3699, European ancestry individuals) and identified 4 common (minor allele frequency >1\%) and 157 rare variants. Common and rare SCN5A coding variants were examined for association with PR and QRS intervals through meta-analysis of European ancestry participants from CHARGE, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute{\textquoteright}s Exome Sequencing Project (n=607), and the UK10K (n=1275) and by examining Exome Sequencing Project African ancestry participants (n=972). Rare coding SCN5A variants in aggregate were associated with PR interval in European and African ancestry participants (P=1.3{\texttimes}10(-3)). Three common variants were associated with PR and QRS interval duration among European ancestry participants and one among African ancestry participants. These included 2 well-known missense variants: rs1805124 (H558R) was associated with PR and QRS shortening in European ancestry participants (P=6.25{\texttimes}10(-4) and P=5.2{\texttimes}10(-3), respectively) and rs7626962 (S1102Y) was associated with PR shortening in those of African ancestry (P=2.82{\texttimes}10(-3)). Among European ancestry participants, 2 novel synonymous variants, rs1805126 and rs6599230, were associated with cardiac conduction. Our top signal, rs1805126 was associated with PR and QRS lengthening (P=3.35{\texttimes}10(-7) and P=2.69{\texttimes}10(-4), respectively) and rs6599230 was associated with PR shortening (P=2.67{\texttimes}10(-5)).

CONCLUSIONS: By sequencing SCN5A, we identified novel common and rare coding variants associated with cardiac conduction.

}, keywords = {Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Aging, Cohort Studies, Female, Genetic Variation, Genome-Wide Association Study, Genomics, Heart Conduction System, Heart Diseases, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, NAV1.5 Voltage-Gated Sodium Channel, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Sequence Analysis, DNA}, issn = {1942-3268}, doi = {10.1161/CIRCGENETICS.113.000098}, author = {Magnani, Jared W and Brody, Jennifer A and Prins, Bram P and Arking, Dan E and Lin, Honghuang and Yin, Xiaoyan and Liu, Ching-Ti and Morrison, Alanna C and Zhang, Feng and Spector, Tim D and Alonso, Alvaro and Bis, Joshua C and Heckbert, Susan R and Lumley, Thomas and Sitlani, Colleen M and Cupples, L Adrienne and Lubitz, Steven A and Soliman, Elsayed Z and Pulit, Sara L and Newton-Cheh, Christopher and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Christopher J and Ellinor, Patrick T and Benjamin, Emelia J and Muzny, Donna M and Gibbs, Richard A and Santibanez, Jireh and Taylor, Herman A and Rotter, Jerome I and Lange, Leslie A and Psaty, Bruce M and Jackson, Rebecca and Rich, Stephen S and Boerwinkle, Eric and Jamshidi, Yalda and Sotoodehnia, Nona} } @article {6578, title = {Strategies to design and analyze targeted sequencing data: cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium Targeted Sequencing Study.}, journal = {Circ Cardiovasc Genet}, volume = {7}, year = {2014}, month = {2014 Jun}, pages = {335-43}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: Genome-wide association studies have identified thousands of genetic variants that influence a variety of diseases and health-related quantitative traits. However, the causal variants underlying the majority of genetic associations remain unknown. Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium Targeted Sequencing Study aims to follow up genome-wide association study signals and identify novel associations of the allelic spectrum of identified variants with cardiovascular-related traits.

METHODS AND RESULTS: The study included 4231 participants from 3 CHARGE cohorts: the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, the Cardiovascular Health Study, and the Framingham Heart Study. We used a case-cohort design in which we selected both a random sample of participants and participants with extreme phenotypes for each of 14 traits. We sequenced and analyzed 77 genomic loci, which had previously been associated with >=1 of 14 phenotypes. A total of 52 736 variants were characterized by sequencing and passed our stringent quality control criteria. For common variants (minor allele frequency >=1\%), we performed unweighted regression analyses to obtain P values for associations and weighted regression analyses to obtain effect estimates that accounted for the sampling design. For rare variants, we applied 2 approaches: collapsed aggregate statistics and joint analysis of variants using the sequence kernel association test.

CONCLUSIONS: We sequenced 77 genomic loci in participants from 3 cohorts. We established a set of filters to identify high-quality variants and implemented statistical and bioinformatics strategies to analyze the sequence data and identify potentially functional variants within genome-wide association study loci.

}, keywords = {Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Aging, Cohort Studies, Female, Genetic Variation, Genome-Wide Association Study, Genomics, Heart Diseases, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Research Design, Sequence Analysis, DNA}, issn = {1942-3268}, doi = {10.1161/CIRCGENETICS.113.000350}, author = {Lin, Honghuang and Wang, Min and Brody, Jennifer A and Bis, Joshua C and Dupuis, Jos{\'e}e and Lumley, Thomas and McKnight, Barbara and Rice, Kenneth M and Sitlani, Colleen M and Reid, Jeffrey G and Bressler, Jan and Liu, Xiaoming and Davis, Brian C and Johnson, Andrew D and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Christopher J and Kovar, Christie L and Dinh, Huyen and Wu, Yuanqing and Newsham, Irene and Chen, Han and Broka, Andi and DeStefano, Anita L and Gupta, Mayetri and Lunetta, Kathryn L and Liu, Ching-Ti and White, Charles C and Xing, Chuanhua and Zhou, Yanhua and Benjamin, Emelia J and Schnabel, Renate B and Heckbert, Susan R and Psaty, Bruce M and Muzny, Donna M and Cupples, L Adrienne and Morrison, Alanna C and Boerwinkle, Eric} } @article {6149, title = {Targeted sequencing in candidate genes for atrial fibrillation: the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Targeted Sequencing Study.}, journal = {Heart Rhythm}, volume = {11}, year = {2014}, month = {2014 Mar}, pages = {452-7}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified common genetic variants that predispose to atrial fibrillation (AF). It is unclear whether rare and low-frequency variants in genes implicated by such GWAS confer additional risk of AF.

OBJECTIVE: To study the association of genetic variants with AF at GWAS top loci.

METHODS: In the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Targeted Sequencing Study, we selected and sequenced 77 target gene regions from GWAS loci of complex diseases or traits, including 4 genes hypothesized to be related to AF (PRRX1, CAV1, CAV2, and ZFHX3). Sequencing was performed in participants with (n = 948) and without (n = 3330) AF from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, the Cardiovascular Health Study, the Framingham Heart Study, and the Massachusetts General Hospital.

RESULTS: One common variant (rs11265611; P = 1.70 {\texttimes} 10(-6)) intronic to IL6R (interleukin-6 receptor gene) was significantly associated with AF after Bonferroni correction (odds ratio 0.70; 95\% confidence interval 0.58-0.85). The variant was not genotyped or imputed by prior GWAS, but it is in linkage disequilibrium (r(2) = .69) with the single-nucleotide polymorphism, with the strongest association with AF so far at this locus (rs4845625). In the rare variant joint analysis, damaging variants within the PRRX1 region showed significant association with AF after Bonferroni correction (P = .01).

CONCLUSIONS: We identified 1 common single-nucleotide polymorphism and 1 gene region that were significantly associated with AF. Future sequencing efforts with larger sample sizes and more comprehensive genome coverage are anticipated to identify additional AF-related variants.

}, keywords = {Aged, Atrial Fibrillation, Female, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genetic Variation, Genome-Wide Association Study, Homeodomain Proteins, Humans, Linkage Disequilibrium, Male, Middle Aged, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Receptors, Interleukin-6}, issn = {1556-3871}, doi = {10.1016/j.hrthm.2013.11.012}, author = {Lin, Honghuang and Sinner, Moritz F and Brody, Jennifer A and Arking, Dan E and Lunetta, Kathryn L and Rienstra, Michiel and Lubitz, Steven A and Magnani, Jared W and Sotoodehnia, Nona and McKnight, Barbara and McManus, David D and Boerwinkle, Eric and Psaty, Bruce M and Rotter, Jerome I and Bis, Joshua C and Gibbs, Richard A and Muzny, Donna and Kovar, Christie L and Morrison, Alanna C and Gupta, Mayetri and Folsom, Aaron R and K{\"a}{\"a}b, Stefan and Heckbert, Susan R and Alonso, Alvaro and Ellinor, Patrick T and Benjamin, Emelia J} } @article {6875, title = {Drug-Gene Interactions of Antihypertensive Medications and Risk of Incident Cardiovascular Disease: A Pharmacogenomics Study from the CHARGE Consortium.}, journal = {PLoS One}, volume = {10}, year = {2015}, month = {2015}, pages = {e0140496}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: Hypertension is a major risk factor for a spectrum of cardiovascular diseases (CVD), including myocardial infarction, sudden death, and stroke. In the US, over 65 million people have high blood pressure and a large proportion of these individuals are prescribed antihypertensive medications. Although large long-term clinical trials conducted in the last several decades have identified a number of effective antihypertensive treatments that reduce the risk of future clinical complications, responses to therapy and protection from cardiovascular events vary among individuals.

METHODS: Using a genome-wide association study among 21,267 participants with pharmaceutically treated hypertension, we explored the hypothesis that genetic variants might influence or modify the effectiveness of common antihypertensive therapies on the risk of major cardiovascular outcomes. The classes of drug treatments included angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors, beta-blockers, calcium channel blockers, and diuretics. In the setting of the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium, each study performed array-based genome-wide genotyping, imputed to HapMap Phase II reference panels, and used additive genetic models in proportional hazards or logistic regression models to evaluate drug-gene interactions for each of four therapeutic drug classes. We used meta-analysis to combine study-specific interaction estimates for approximately 2 million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a discovery analysis among 15,375 European Ancestry participants (3,527 CVD cases) with targeted follow-up in a case-only study of 1,751 European Ancestry GenHAT participants as well as among 4,141 African-Americans (1,267 CVD cases).

RESULTS: Although drug-SNP interactions were biologically plausible, exposures and outcomes were well measured, and power was sufficient to detect modest interactions, we did not identify any statistically significant interactions from the four antihypertensive therapy meta-analyses (Pinteraction > 5.0{\texttimes}10-8). Similarly, findings were null for meta-analyses restricted to 66 SNPs with significant main effects on coronary artery disease or blood pressure from large published genome-wide association studies (Pinteraction >= 0.01). Our results suggest that there are no major pharmacogenetic influences of common SNPs on the relationship between blood pressure medications and the risk of incident CVD.

}, keywords = {African Americans, Aged, Antihypertensive Agents, Cardiovascular Diseases, European Continental Ancestry Group, Female, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Hypertension, Incidence, Male, Middle Aged, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Treatment Outcome}, issn = {1932-6203}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0140496}, author = {Bis, Joshua C and Sitlani, Colleen and Irvin, Ryan and Avery, Christy L and Smith, Albert Vernon and Sun, Fangui and Evans, Daniel S and Musani, Solomon K and Li, Xiaohui and Trompet, Stella and Krijthe, Bouwe P and Harris, Tamara B and Quibrera, P Miguel and Brody, Jennifer A and Demissie, Serkalem and Davis, Barry R and Wiggins, Kerri L and Tranah, Gregory J and Lange, Leslie A and Sotoodehnia, Nona and Stott, David J and Franco, Oscar H and Launer, Lenore J and St{\"u}rmer, Til and Taylor, Kent D and Cupples, L Adrienne and Eckfeldt, John H and Smith, Nicholas L and Liu, Yongmei and Wilson, James G and Heckbert, Susan R and Buckley, Brendan M and Ikram, M Arfan and Boerwinkle, Eric and Chen, Yii-Der Ida and de Craen, Anton J M and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Rotter, Jerome I and Ford, Ian and Hofman, Albert and Sattar, Naveed and Slagboom, P Eline and Westendorp, Rudi G J and Gudnason, Vilmundur and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Lumley, Thomas and Cummings, Steven R and Taylor, Herman A and Post, Wendy and Jukema, J Wouter and Stricker, Bruno H and Whitsel, Eric A and Psaty, Bruce M and Arnett, Donna} } @article {6682, title = {Genome of The Netherlands population-specific imputations identify an ABCA6 variant associated with cholesterol levels.}, journal = {Nat Commun}, volume = {6}, year = {2015}, month = {2015}, pages = {6065}, abstract = {

Variants associated with blood lipid levels may be population-specific. To identify low-frequency variants associated with this phenotype, population-specific reference panels may be used. Here we impute nine large Dutch biobanks (~35,000 samples) with the population-specific reference panel created by the Genome of The Netherlands Project and perform association testing with blood lipid levels. We report the discovery of five novel associations at four loci (P value <6.61 {\texttimes} 10(-4)), including a rare missense variant in ABCA6 (rs77542162, p.Cys1359Arg, frequency 0.034), which is predicted to be deleterious. The frequency of this ABCA6 variant is 3.65-fold increased in the Dutch and its effect (βLDL-C=0.135, βTC=0.140) is estimated to be very similar to those observed for single variants in well-known lipid genes, such as LDLR.

}, keywords = {ATP-Binding Cassette Transporters, Cholesterol, Gene Frequency, Genetic Association Studies, Humans, Mutation, Missense, Netherlands}, issn = {2041-1723}, doi = {10.1038/ncomms7065}, author = {van Leeuwen, Elisabeth M and Karssen, Lennart C and Deelen, Joris and Isaacs, Aaron and Medina-G{\'o}mez, Carolina and Mbarek, Hamdi and Kanterakis, Alexandros and Trompet, Stella and Postmus, Iris and Verweij, Niek and van Enckevort, David J and Huffman, Jennifer E and White, Charles C and Feitosa, Mary F and Bartz, Traci M and Manichaikul, Ani and Joshi, Peter K and Peloso, Gina M and Deelen, Patrick and van Dijk, Freerk and Willemsen, Gonneke and de Geus, Eco J and Milaneschi, Yuri and Penninx, Brenda W J H and Francioli, Laurent C and Menelaou, Androniki and Pulit, Sara L and Rivadeneira, Fernando and Hofman, Albert and Oostra, Ben A and Franco, Oscar H and Mateo Leach, Irene and Beekman, Marian and de Craen, Anton J M and Uh, Hae-Won and Trochet, Holly and Hocking, Lynne J and Porteous, David J and Sattar, Naveed and Packard, Chris J and Buckley, Brendan M and Brody, Jennifer A and Bis, Joshua C and Rotter, Jerome I and Mychaleckyj, Josyf C and Campbell, Harry and Duan, Qing and Lange, Leslie A and Wilson, James F and Hayward, Caroline and Polasek, Ozren and Vitart, Veronique and Rudan, Igor and Wright, Alan F and Rich, Stephen S and Psaty, Bruce M and Borecki, Ingrid B and Kearney, Patricia M and Stott, David J and Adrienne Cupples, L and Jukema, J Wouter and van der Harst, Pim and Sijbrands, Eric J and Hottenga, Jouke-Jan and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Swertz, Morris A and van Ommen, Gert-Jan B and de Bakker, Paul I W and Eline Slagboom, P and Boomsma, Dorret I and Wijmenga, Cisca and van Duijn, Cornelia M} } @article {6703, title = {Genome-Wide Association Study and Linkage Analysis of the Healthy Aging Index.}, journal = {J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci}, volume = {70}, year = {2015}, month = {2015 Aug}, pages = {1003-8}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: The Healthy Aging Index (HAI) is a tool for measuring the extent of health and disease across multiple systems.

METHODS: We conducted a genome-wide association study and a genome-wide linkage analysis to map quantitative trait loci associated with the HAI and a modified HAI weighted for mortality risk in 3,140 individuals selected for familial longevity from the Long Life Family Study. The genome-wide association study used the Long Life Family Study as the discovery cohort and individuals from the Cardiovascular Health Study and the Framingham Heart Study as replication cohorts.

RESULTS: There were no genome-wide significant findings from the genome-wide association study; however, several single-nucleotide polymorphisms near ZNF704 on chromosome 8q21.13 were suggestively associated with the HAI in the Long Life Family Study (p < 10(-) (6)) and nominally replicated in the Cardiovascular Health Study and Framingham Heart Study. Linkage results revealed significant evidence (log-odds score = 3.36) for a quantitative trait locus for mortality-optimized HAI in women on chromosome 9p24-p23. However, results of fine-mapping studies did not implicate any specific candidate genes within this region of interest.

CONCLUSIONS: ZNF704 may be a potential candidate gene for studies of the genetic underpinnings of longevity.

}, keywords = {Aging, Apolipoproteins E, Forkhead Transcription Factors, Genetic Linkage, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Longevity, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Quantitative Trait Loci}, issn = {1758-535X}, doi = {10.1093/gerona/glv006}, author = {Minster, Ryan L and Sanders, Jason L and Singh, Jatinder and Kammerer, Candace M and Barmada, M Michael and Matteini, Amy M and Zhang, Qunyuan and Wojczynski, Mary K and Daw, E Warwick and Brody, Jennifer A and Arnold, Alice M and Lunetta, Kathryn L and Murabito, Joanne M and Christensen, Kaare and Perls, Thomas T and Province, Michael A and Newman, Anne B} } @article {6860, title = {Integrative pathway genomics of lung function and airflow obstruction.}, journal = {Hum Mol Genet}, volume = {24}, year = {2015}, month = {2015 Dec 1}, pages = {6836-48}, abstract = {

Chronic respiratory disorders are important contributors to the global burden of disease. Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of lung function measures have identified several trait-associated loci, but explain only a modest portion of the phenotypic variability. We postulated that integrating pathway-based methods with GWASs of pulmonary function and airflow obstruction would identify a broader repertoire of genes and processes influencing these traits. We performed two independent GWASs of lung function and applied gene set enrichment analysis to one of the studies and validated the results using the second GWAS. We identified 131 significantly enriched gene sets associated with lung function and clustered them into larger biological modules involved in diverse processes including development, immunity, cell signaling, proliferation and arachidonic acid. We found that enrichment of gene sets was not driven by GWAS-significant variants or loci, but instead by those with less stringent association P-values. Next, we applied pathway enrichment analysis to a meta-analyzed GWAS of airflow obstruction. We identified several biologic modules that functionally overlapped with those associated with pulmonary function. However, differences were also noted, including enrichment of extracellular matrix (ECM) processes specifically in the airflow obstruction study. Network analysis of the ECM module implicated a candidate gene, matrix metalloproteinase 10 (MMP10), as a putative disease target. We used a knockout mouse model to functionally validate MMP10{\textquoteright}s role in influencing lung{\textquoteright}s susceptibility to cigarette smoke-induced emphysema. By integrating pathway analysis with population-based genomics, we unraveled biologic processes underlying pulmonary function traits and identified a candidate gene for obstructive lung disease.

}, keywords = {Airway Obstruction, Animals, Cell Proliferation, European Continental Ancestry Group, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genome-Wide Association Study, Genomics, Humans, Immune System, Lung, Male, Metabolic Networks and Pathways, Mice, Phenotype, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Signal Transduction}, issn = {1460-2083}, doi = {10.1093/hmg/ddv378}, author = {Gharib, Sina A and Loth, Daan W and Soler Artigas, Maria and Birkland, Timothy P and Wilk, Jemma B and Wain, Louise V and Brody, Jennifer A and Obeidat, Ma{\textquoteright}en and Hancock, Dana B and Tang, Wenbo and Rawal, Rajesh and Boezen, H Marike and Imboden, Medea and Huffman, Jennifer E and Lahousse, Lies and Alves, Alexessander C and Manichaikul, Ani and Hui, Jennie and Morrison, Alanna C and Ramasamy, Adaikalavan and Smith, Albert Vernon and Gudnason, Vilmundur and Surakka, Ida and Vitart, Veronique and Evans, David M and Strachan, David P and Deary, Ian J and Hofman, Albert and Gl{\"a}ser, Sven and Wilson, James F and North, Kari E and Zhao, Jing Hua and Heckbert, Susan R and Jarvis, Deborah L and Probst-Hensch, Nicole and Schulz, Holger and Barr, R Graham and Jarvelin, Marjo-Riitta and O{\textquoteright}Connor, George T and K{\"a}h{\"o}nen, Mika and Cassano, Patricia A and Hysi, Pirro G and Dupuis, Jos{\'e}e and Hayward, Caroline and Psaty, Bruce M and Hall, Ian P and Parks, William C and Tobin, Martin D and London, Stephanie J} } @article {6686, title = {Low-frequency and rare exome chip variants associate with fasting glucose and type 2 diabetes susceptibility.}, journal = {Nat Commun}, volume = {6}, year = {2015}, month = {2015}, pages = {5897}, abstract = {

Fasting glucose and insulin are intermediate traits for type 2 diabetes. Here we explore the role of coding variation on these traits by analysis of variants on the HumanExome BeadChip in 60,564 non-diabetic individuals and in 16,491 T2D cases and 81,877 controls. We identify a novel association of a low-frequency nonsynonymous SNV in GLP1R (A316T; rs10305492; MAF=1.4\%) with lower FG (β=-0.09{\textpm}0.01 mmol l(-1), P=3.4 {\texttimes} 10(-12)), T2D risk (OR[95\%CI]=0.86[0.76-0.96], P=0.010), early insulin secretion (β=-0.07{\textpm}0.035 pmolinsulin mmolglucose(-1), P=0.048), but higher 2-h glucose (β=0.16{\textpm}0.05 mmol l(-1), P=4.3 {\texttimes} 10(-4)). We identify a gene-based association with FG at G6PC2 (pSKAT=6.8 {\texttimes} 10(-6)) driven by four rare protein-coding SNVs (H177Y, Y207S, R283X and S324P). We identify rs651007 (MAF=20\%) in the first intron of ABO at the putative promoter of an antisense lncRNA, associating with higher FG (β=0.02{\textpm}0.004 mmol l(-1), P=1.3 {\texttimes} 10(-8)). Our approach identifies novel coding variant associations and extends the allelic spectrum of variation underlying diabetes-related quantitative traits and T2D susceptibility.

}, keywords = {African Continental Ancestry Group, Blood Glucose, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, European Continental Ancestry Group, Exome, Fasting, Genetic Association Studies, Genetic Loci, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genetic Variation, Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor, Glucose-6-Phosphatase, Humans, Insulin, Mutation Rate, Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide}, issn = {2041-1723}, doi = {10.1038/ncomms6897}, author = {Wessel, Jennifer and Chu, Audrey Y and Willems, Sara M and Wang, Shuai and Yaghootkar, Hanieh and Brody, Jennifer A and Dauriz, Marco and Hivert, Marie-France and Raghavan, Sridharan and Lipovich, Leonard and Hidalgo, Bertha and Fox, Keolu and Huffman, Jennifer E and An, Ping and Lu, Yingchang and Rasmussen-Torvik, Laura J and Grarup, Niels and Ehm, Margaret G and Li, Li and Baldridge, Abigail S and Stan{\v c}{\'a}kov{\'a}, Alena and Abrol, Ravinder and Besse, C{\'e}line and Boland, Anne and Bork-Jensen, Jette and Fornage, Myriam and Freitag, Daniel F and Garcia, Melissa E and Guo, Xiuqing and Hara, Kazuo and Isaacs, Aaron and Jakobsdottir, Johanna and Lange, Leslie A and Layton, Jill C and Li, Man and Hua Zhao, Jing and Meidtner, Karina and Morrison, Alanna C and Nalls, Mike A and Peters, Marjolein J and Sabater-Lleal, Maria and Schurmann, Claudia and Silveira, Angela and Smith, Albert V and Southam, Lorraine and Stoiber, Marcus H and Strawbridge, Rona J and Taylor, Kent D and Varga, Tibor V and Allin, Kristine H and Amin, Najaf and Aponte, Jennifer L and Aung, Tin and Barbieri, Caterina and Bihlmeyer, Nathan A and Boehnke, Michael and Bombieri, Cristina and Bowden, Donald W and Burns, Sean M and Chen, Yuning and Chen, Yii-DerI and Cheng, Ching-Yu and Correa, Adolfo and Czajkowski, Jacek and Dehghan, Abbas and Ehret, Georg B and Eiriksdottir, Gudny and Escher, Stefan A and Farmaki, Aliki-Eleni and Fr{\r a}nberg, Mattias and Gambaro, Giovanni and Giulianini, Franco and Goddard, William A and Goel, Anuj and Gottesman, Omri and Grove, Megan L and Gustafsson, Stefan and Hai, Yang and Hallmans, G{\"o}ran and Heo, Jiyoung and Hoffmann, Per and Ikram, Mohammad K and Jensen, Richard A and J{\o}rgensen, Marit E and J{\o}rgensen, Torben and Karaleftheri, Maria and Khor, Chiea C and Kirkpatrick, Andrea and Kraja, Aldi T and Kuusisto, Johanna and Lange, Ethan M and Lee, I T and Lee, Wen-Jane and Leong, Aaron and Liao, Jiemin and Liu, Chunyu and Liu, Yongmei and Lindgren, Cecilia M and Linneberg, Allan and Malerba, Giovanni and Mamakou, Vasiliki and Marouli, Eirini and Maruthur, Nisa M and Matchan, Angela and McKean-Cowdin, Roberta and McLeod, Olga and Metcalf, Ginger A and Mohlke, Karen L and Muzny, Donna M and Ntalla, Ioanna and Palmer, Nicholette D and Pasko, Dorota and Peter, Andreas and Rayner, Nigel W and Renstrom, Frida and Rice, Ken and Sala, Cinzia F and Sennblad, Bengt and Serafetinidis, Ioannis and Smith, Jennifer A and Soranzo, Nicole and Speliotes, Elizabeth K and Stahl, Eli A and Stirrups, Kathleen and Tentolouris, Nikos and Thanopoulou, Anastasia and Torres, Mina and Traglia, Michela and Tsafantakis, Emmanouil and Javad, Sundas and Yanek, Lisa R and Zengini, Eleni and Becker, Diane M and Bis, Joshua C and Brown, James B and Cupples, L Adrienne and Hansen, Torben and Ingelsson, Erik and Karter, Andrew J and Lorenzo, Carlos and Mathias, Rasika A and Norris, Jill M and Peloso, Gina M and Sheu, Wayne H-H and Toniolo, Daniela and Vaidya, Dhananjay and Varma, Rohit and Wagenknecht, Lynne E and Boeing, Heiner and Bottinger, Erwin P and Dedoussis, George and Deloukas, Panos and Ferrannini, Ele and Franco, Oscar H and Franks, Paul W and Gibbs, Richard A and Gudnason, Vilmundur and Hamsten, Anders and Harris, Tamara B and Hattersley, Andrew T and Hayward, Caroline and Hofman, Albert and Jansson, Jan-H{\r a}kan and Langenberg, Claudia and Launer, Lenore J and Levy, Daniel and Oostra, Ben A and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Christopher J and O{\textquoteright}Rahilly, Stephen and Padmanabhan, Sandosh and Pankow, James S and Polasek, Ozren and Province, Michael A and Rich, Stephen S and Ridker, Paul M and Rudan, Igor and Schulze, Matthias B and Smith, Blair H and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Walker, Mark and Watkins, Hugh and Wong, Tien Y and Zeggini, Eleftheria and Laakso, Markku and Borecki, Ingrid B and Chasman, Daniel I and Pedersen, Oluf and Psaty, Bruce M and Tai, E Shyong and van Duijn, Cornelia M and Wareham, Nicholas J and Waterworth, Dawn M and Boerwinkle, Eric and Kao, W H Linda and Florez, Jose C and Loos, Ruth J F and Wilson, James G and Frayling, Timothy M and Siscovick, David S and Dupuis, Jos{\'e}e and Rotter, Jerome I and Meigs, James B and Scott, Robert A and Goodarzi, Mark O} } @article {6681, title = {Meta-analysis of 65,734 individuals identifies TSPAN15 and SLC44A2 as two susceptibility loci for venous thromboembolism.}, journal = {Am J Hum Genet}, volume = {96}, year = {2015}, month = {2015 Apr 2}, pages = {532-42}, abstract = {

Venous thromboembolism (VTE), the third leading cause of cardiovascular mortality, is a complex thrombotic disorder with environmental and genetic determinants. Although several genetic variants have been found associated with VTE, they explain a minor proportion of VTE risk in cases. We undertook a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies (GWASs) to identify additional VTE susceptibility genes. Twelve GWASs totaling 7,507 VTE case subjects and 52,632 control subjects formed our discovery stage where 6,751,884 SNPs were tested for association with VTE. Nine loci reached the genome-wide significance level of 5~{\texttimes} 10(-8) including six already known to associate with VTE (ABO, F2, F5, F11, FGG, and PROCR) and three unsuspected loci. SNPs mapping to these latter were selected for replication in three independent case-control studies totaling 3,009 VTE-affected individuals and 2,586 control subjects. This strategy led to the identification and replication of two VTE-associated loci, TSPAN15 and SLC44A2, with lead risk alleles associated with odds ratio for disease of 1.31 (p = 1.67~{\texttimes} 10(-16)) and 1.21 (p = 2.75~{\texttimes} 10(-15)), respectively. The lead SNP at the TSPAN15 locus is the intronic rs78707713 and the lead SLC44A2 SNP is the non-synonymous rs2288904 previously shown to associate with transfusion-related acute lung injury. We further showed that these two variants did not associate with known hemostatic plasma markers. TSPAN15 and SLC44A2 do not belong to conventional pathways for thrombosis and have not been associated to other cardiovascular diseases nor related quantitative biomarkers. Our findings uncovered unexpected actors of VTE etiology and pave the way for novel mechanistic concepts of VTE pathophysiology.

}, keywords = {Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genome-Wide Association Study, Genotype, Humans, Membrane Glycoproteins, Membrane Transport Proteins, Odds Ratio, Tetraspanins, Venous Thromboembolism}, issn = {1537-6605}, doi = {10.1016/j.ajhg.2015.01.019}, author = {Germain, Marine and Chasman, Daniel I and de Haan, Hugoline and Tang, Weihong and Lindstr{\"o}m, Sara and Weng, Lu-Chen and de Andrade, Mariza and de Visser, Marieke C H and Wiggins, Kerri L and Suchon, Pierre and Saut, No{\'e}mie and Smadja, David M and Le Gal, Gr{\'e}goire and van Hylckama Vlieg, Astrid and Di Narzo, Antonio and Hao, Ke and Nelson, Christopher P and Rocanin-Arjo, Ares and Folkersen, Lasse and Monajemi, Ramin and Rose, Lynda M and Brody, Jennifer A and Slagboom, Eline and A{\"\i}ssi, Dylan and Gagnon, France and Deleuze, Jean-Francois and Deloukas, Panos and Tzourio, Christophe and Dartigues, Jean-Fran{\c c}ois and Berr, Claudine and Taylor, Kent D and Civelek, Mete and Eriksson, Per and Psaty, Bruce M and Houwing-Duitermaat, Jeanine and Goodall, Alison H and Cambien, Francois and Kraft, Peter and Amouyel, Philippe and Samani, Nilesh J and Basu, Saonli and Ridker, Paul M and Rosendaal, Frits R and Kabrhel, Christopher and Folsom, Aaron R and Heit, John and Reitsma, Pieter H and Tr{\'e}gou{\"e}t, David-Alexandre and Smith, Nicholas L and Morange, Pierre-Emmanuel} } @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 {7583, title = {DNA Methylation Analysis Identifies Loci for Blood Pressure Regulation.}, journal = {Am J Hum Genet}, volume = {101}, year = {2017}, month = {2017 Dec 07}, pages = {888-902}, abstract = {

Genome-wide association studies have identified hundreds of genetic variants associated with blood pressure (BP), but sequence variation accounts for a small fraction of the phenotypic variance. Epigenetic changes may alter the expression of genes involved in BP regulation and explain part of the missing heritability. We therefore conducted a two-stage meta-analysis of the cross-sectional associations of systolic and diastolic BP with blood-derived genome-wide DNA methylation measured on the Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip in 17,010 individuals of European, African American, and Hispanic ancestry. Of 31 discovery-stage cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) dinucleotides, 13 replicated after Bonferroni correction (discovery: N = 9,828, p < 1.0~{\texttimes} 10-7; replication: N = 7,182, p~<~1.6~{\texttimes} 10-3). The replicated methylation sites are heritable (h2 > 30\%) and independent of known BP genetic variants, explaining an additional 1.4\% and 2.0\% of the interindividual variation in systolic and diastolic BP, respectively. Bidirectional Mendelian randomization among up to 4,513 individuals of European ancestry from 4 cohorts suggested that methylation at cg08035323 (TAF1B-YWHAQ) influences BP, while BP influences methylation at cg00533891 (ZMIZ1), cg00574958 (CPT1A), and cg02711608 (SLC1A5). Gene expression analyses further identified six genes (TSPAN2, SLC7A11, UNC93B1, CPT1A, PTMS, and LPCAT3) with evidence of triangular associations between methylation, gene expression, and BP. Additional integrative Mendelian randomization analyses of gene expression and DNA methylation suggested that the expression of TSPAN2 is a putative mediator of association between DNA methylation at cg23999170 and BP. These findings suggest that heritable DNA methylation plays a role in regulating BP independently of previously known genetic variants.

}, keywords = {Aged, Blood Pressure, CpG Islands, Cross-Sectional Studies, DNA Methylation, Epigenesis, Genetic, Genetic Variation, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Mendelian Randomization Analysis, Middle Aged, Nerve Tissue Proteins, Quantitative Trait Loci, Tetraspanins}, issn = {1537-6605}, doi = {10.1016/j.ajhg.2017.09.028}, author = {Richard, Melissa A and Huan, Tianxiao and Ligthart, Symen and Gondalia, Rahul and Jhun, Min A and Brody, Jennifer A and Irvin, Marguerite R and Marioni, Riccardo and Shen, Jincheng and Tsai, Pei-Chien and Montasser, May E and Jia, Yucheng and Syme, Catriona and Salfati, Elias L and Boerwinkle, Eric and Guan, Weihua and Mosley, Thomas H and Bressler, Jan and Morrison, Alanna C and Liu, Chunyu and Mendelson, Michael M and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and van Meurs, Joyce B and Franco, Oscar H and Zhang, Guosheng and Li, Yun and Stewart, James D and Bis, Joshua C and Psaty, Bruce M and Chen, Yii-Der Ida and Kardia, Sharon L R and Zhao, Wei and Turner, Stephen T and Absher, Devin and Aslibekyan, Stella and Starr, John M and McRae, Allan F and Hou, Lifang and Just, Allan C and Schwartz, Joel D and Vokonas, Pantel S and Menni, Cristina and Spector, Tim D and Shuldiner, Alan and Damcott, Coleen M and Rotter, Jerome I and Palmas, Walter and Liu, Yongmei and Paus, Tom{\'a}{\v s} and Horvath, Steve and O{\textquoteright}Connell, Jeffrey R and Guo, Xiuqing and Pausova, Zdenka and Assimes, Themistocles L and Sotoodehnia, Nona and Smith, Jennifer A and Arnett, Donna K and Deary, Ian J and Baccarelli, Andrea A and Bell, Jordana T and Whitsel, Eric and Dehghan, Abbas and Levy, Daniel and Fornage, Myriam} } @article {7587, title = {Rare coding variants in PLCG2, ABI3, and TREM2 implicate microglial-mediated innate immunity in Alzheimer{\textquoteright}s disease.}, journal = {Nat Genet}, volume = {49}, year = {2017}, month = {2017 Sep}, pages = {1373-1384}, abstract = {

We identified rare coding variants associated with Alzheimer{\textquoteright}s disease in a three-stage case-control study of 85,133 subjects. In stage 1, we genotyped 34,174 samples using a whole-exome microarray. In stage 2, we tested associated variants (P < 1 {\texttimes} 10-4) in 35,962 independent samples using de novo genotyping and imputed genotypes. In stage 3, we used an additional 14,997 samples to test the most significant stage 2 associations (P < 5 {\texttimes} 10-8) using imputed genotypes. We observed three new genome-wide significant nonsynonymous variants associated with Alzheimer{\textquoteright}s disease: a protective variant in PLCG2 (rs72824905: p.Pro522Arg, P = 5.38 {\texttimes} 10-10, odds ratio (OR) = 0.68, minor allele frequency (MAF)cases = 0.0059, MAFcontrols = 0.0093), a risk variant in ABI3 (rs616338: p.Ser209Phe, P = 4.56 {\texttimes} 10-10, OR = 1.43, MAFcases = 0.011, MAFcontrols = 0.008), and a new genome-wide significant variant in TREM2 (rs143332484: p.Arg62His, P = 1.55 {\texttimes} 10-14, OR = 1.67, MAFcases = 0.0143, MAFcontrols = 0.0089), a known susceptibility gene for Alzheimer{\textquoteright}s disease. These protein-altering changes are in genes highly expressed in microglia and highlight an immune-related protein-protein interaction network enriched for previously identified risk genes in Alzheimer{\textquoteright}s disease. These genetic findings provide additional evidence that the microglia-mediated innate immune response contributes directly to the development of Alzheimer{\textquoteright}s disease.

}, keywords = {Adaptor Proteins, Signal Transducing, Alzheimer Disease, Amino Acid Sequence, Case-Control Studies, Exome, Gene Expression Profiling, Gene Frequency, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genotype, Humans, Immunity, Innate, Linkage Disequilibrium, Membrane Glycoproteins, Microglia, Odds Ratio, Phospholipase C gamma, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Protein Interaction Maps, Receptors, Immunologic, Sequence Homology, Amino Acid}, issn = {1546-1718}, doi = {10.1038/ng.3916}, author = {Sims, Rebecca and van der Lee, Sven J and Naj, Adam C and Bellenguez, C{\'e}line and Badarinarayan, Nandini and Jakobsdottir, Johanna and Kunkle, Brian W and Boland, Anne and Raybould, Rachel and Bis, Joshua C and Martin, Eden R and Grenier-Boley, Benjamin and Heilmann-Heimbach, Stefanie and Chouraki, Vincent and Kuzma, Amanda B and Sleegers, Kristel and Vronskaya, Maria and Ruiz, Agustin and Graham, Robert R and Olaso, Robert and Hoffmann, Per and Grove, Megan L and Vardarajan, Badri N and Hiltunen, Mikko and N{\"o}then, Markus M and White, Charles C and Hamilton-Nelson, Kara L and Epelbaum, Jacques and Maier, Wolfgang and Choi, Seung-Hoan and Beecham, Gary W and Dulary, C{\'e}cile and Herms, Stefan and Smith, Albert V and Funk, Cory C and Derbois, C{\'e}line and Forstner, Andreas J and Ahmad, Shahzad and Li, Hongdong and Bacq, Delphine and Harold, Denise and Satizabal, Claudia L and Valladares, Otto and Squassina, Alessio and Thomas, Rhodri and Brody, Jennifer A and Qu, Liming and S{\'a}nchez-Juan, Pascual and Morgan, Taniesha and Wolters, Frank J and Zhao, Yi and Garcia, Florentino Sanchez and Denning, Nicola and Fornage, Myriam and Malamon, John and Naranjo, Maria Candida Deniz and Majounie, Elisa and Mosley, Thomas H and Dombroski, Beth and Wallon, David and Lupton, Michelle K and Dupuis, Jos{\'e}e and Whitehead, Patrice and Fratiglioni, Laura and Medway, Christopher and Jian, Xueqiu and Mukherjee, Shubhabrata and Keller, Lina and Brown, Kristelle and Lin, Honghuang and Cantwell, Laura B and Panza, Francesco and McGuinness, Bernadette and Moreno-Grau, Sonia and Burgess, Jeremy D and Solfrizzi, Vincenzo and Proitsi, Petra and Adams, Hieab H and Allen, Mariet and Seripa, Davide and Pastor, Pau and Cupples, L Adrienne and Price, Nathan D and Hannequin, Didier and Frank-Garc{\'\i}a, Ana and Levy, Daniel and Chakrabarty, Paramita and Caffarra, Paolo and Giegling, Ina and Beiser, Alexa S and Giedraitis, Vilmantas and Hampel, Harald and Garcia, Melissa E and Wang, Xue and Lannfelt, Lars and Mecocci, Patrizia and Eiriksdottir, Gudny and Crane, Paul K and Pasquier, Florence and Boccardi, Virginia and Hen{\'a}ndez, Isabel and Barber, Robert C and Scherer, Martin and Tarraga, Lluis and Adams, Perrie M and Leber, Markus and Chen, Yuning and Albert, Marilyn S and Riedel-Heller, Steffi and Emilsson, Valur and Beekly, Duane and Braae, Anne and Schmidt, Reinhold and Blacker, Deborah and Masullo, Carlo and Schmidt, Helena and Doody, Rachelle S and Spalletta, Gianfranco and Jr, W T Longstreth and Fairchild, Thomas J and Boss{\`u}, Paola and Lopez, Oscar L and Frosch, Matthew P and Sacchinelli, Eleonora and Ghetti, Bernardino and Yang, Qiong and Huebinger, Ryan M and Jessen, Frank and Li, Shuo and Kamboh, M Ilyas and Morris, John and Sotolongo-Grau, Oscar and Katz, Mindy J and Corcoran, Chris and Dunstan, Melanie and Braddel, Amy and Thomas, Charlene and Meggy, Alun and Marshall, Rachel and Gerrish, Amy and Chapman, Jade and Aguilar, Miquel and Taylor, Sarah and Hill, Matt and Fair{\'e}n, M{\`o}nica D{\'\i}ez and Hodges, Angela and Vellas, Bruno and Soininen, Hilkka and Kloszewska, Iwona and Daniilidou, Makrina and Uphill, James and Patel, Yogen and Hughes, Joseph T and Lord, Jenny and Turton, James and Hartmann, Annette M and Cecchetti, Roberta and Fenoglio, Chiara and Serpente, Maria and Arcaro, Marina and Caltagirone, Carlo and Orfei, Maria Donata and Ciaramella, Antonio and Pichler, Sabrina and Mayhaus, Manuel and Gu, Wei and Lleo, Alberto and Fortea, Juan and Blesa, Rafael and Barber, Imelda S and Brookes, Keeley and Cupidi, Chiara and Maletta, Raffaele Giovanni and Carrell, David and Sorbi, Sandro and Moebus, Susanne and Urbano, Maria and Pilotto, Alberto and Kornhuber, Johannes and Bosco, Paolo and Todd, Stephen and Craig, David and Johnston, Janet and Gill, Michael and Lawlor, Brian and Lynch, Aoibhinn and Fox, Nick C and Hardy, John and Albin, Roger L and Apostolova, Liana G and Arnold, Steven E and Asthana, Sanjay and Atwood, Craig S and Baldwin, Clinton T and Barnes, Lisa L and Barral, Sandra and Beach, Thomas G and Becker, James T and Bigio, Eileen H and Bird, Thomas D and Boeve, Bradley F and Bowen, James D and Boxer, Adam and Burke, James R and Burns, Jeffrey M and Buxbaum, Joseph D and Cairns, Nigel J and Cao, Chuanhai and Carlson, Chris S and Carlsson, Cynthia M and Carney, Regina M and Carrasquillo, Minerva M and Carroll, Steven L and Diaz, Carolina Ceballos and Chui, Helena C and Clark, David G and Cribbs, David H and Crocco, Elizabeth A and DeCarli, Charles and Dick, Malcolm and Duara, Ranjan and Evans, Denis A and Faber, Kelley M and Fallon, Kenneth B and Fardo, David W and Farlow, Martin R and Ferris, Steven and Foroud, Tatiana M and Galasko, Douglas R and Gearing, Marla and Geschwind, Daniel H and Gilbert, John R and Graff-Radford, Neill R and Green, Robert C and Growdon, John H and Hamilton, Ronald L and Harrell, Lindy E and Honig, Lawrence S and Huentelman, Matthew J and Hulette, Christine M and Hyman, Bradley T and Jarvik, Gail P and Abner, Erin and Jin, Lee-Way and Jun, Gyungah and Karydas, Anna and Kaye, Jeffrey A and Kim, Ronald and Kowall, Neil W and Kramer, Joel H and LaFerla, Frank M and Lah, James J and Leverenz, James B and Levey, Allan I and Li, Ge and Lieberman, Andrew P and Lunetta, Kathryn L and Lyketsos, Constantine G and Marson, Daniel C and Martiniuk, Frank and Mash, Deborah C and Masliah, Eliezer and McCormick, Wayne C and McCurry, Susan M and McDavid, Andrew N and McKee, Ann C and Mesulam, Marsel and Miller, Bruce L and Miller, Carol A and Miller, Joshua W and Morris, John C and Murrell, Jill R and Myers, Amanda J and O{\textquoteright}Bryant, Sid and Olichney, John M and Pankratz, Vernon S and Parisi, Joseph E and Paulson, Henry L and Perry, William and Peskind, Elaine and Pierce, Aimee and Poon, Wayne W and Potter, Huntington and Quinn, Joseph F and Raj, Ashok and Raskind, Murray and Reisberg, Barry and Reitz, Christiane and Ringman, John M and Roberson, Erik D and Rogaeva, Ekaterina and Rosen, Howard J and Rosenberg, Roger N and Sager, Mark A and Saykin, Andrew J and Schneider, Julie A and Schneider, Lon S and Seeley, William W and Smith, Amanda G and Sonnen, Joshua A and Spina, Salvatore and Stern, Robert A and Swerdlow, Russell H and Tanzi, Rudolph E and Thornton-Wells, Tricia A and Trojanowski, John Q and Troncoso, Juan C and Van Deerlin, Vivianna M and Van Eldik, Linda J and Vinters, Harry V and Vonsattel, Jean Paul and Weintraub, Sandra and Welsh-Bohmer, Kathleen A and Wilhelmsen, Kirk C and Williamson, Jennifer and Wingo, Thomas S and Woltjer, Randall L and Wright, Clinton B and Yu, Chang-En and Yu, Lei and Garzia, Fabienne and Golamaully, Feroze and Septier, Gislain and Engelborghs, Sebastien and Vandenberghe, Rik and De Deyn, Peter P and Fernadez, Carmen Mu{\~n}oz and Benito, Yoland Aladro and Thonberg, H{\r a}kan and Forsell, Charlotte and Lilius, Lena and Kinhult-St{\r a}hlbom, Anne and Kilander, Lena and Brundin, RoseMarie and Concari, Letizia and Helisalmi, Seppo and Koivisto, Anne Maria and Haapasalo, Annakaisa and Dermecourt, Vincent and Fi{\'e}vet, Nathalie and Hanon, Olivier and Dufouil, Carole and Brice, Alexis and Ritchie, Karen and Dubois, Bruno and Himali, Jayanadra J and Keene, C Dirk and Tschanz, JoAnn and Fitzpatrick, Annette L and Kukull, Walter A and Norton, Maria and Aspelund, Thor and Larson, Eric B and Munger, Ron and Rotter, Jerome I and Lipton, Richard B and Bullido, Mar{\'\i}a J and Hofman, Albert and Montine, Thomas J and Coto, Eliecer and Boerwinkle, Eric and Petersen, Ronald C and Alvarez, Victoria and Rivadeneira, Fernando and Reiman, Eric M and Gallo, Maura and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Christopher J and Reisch, Joan S and Bruni, Amalia Cecilia and Royall, Donald R and Dichgans, Martin and Sano, Mary and Galimberti, Daniela and St George-Hyslop, Peter and Scarpini, Elio and Tsuang, Debby W and Mancuso, Michelangelo and Bonuccelli, Ubaldo and Winslow, Ashley R and Daniele, Antonio and Wu, Chuang-Kuo and Peters, Oliver and Nacmias, Benedetta and Riemenschneider, Matthias and Heun, Reinhard and Brayne, Carol and Rubinsztein, David C and Bras, Jose and Guerreiro, Rita and Al-Chalabi, Ammar and Shaw, Christopher E and Collinge, John and Mann, David and Tsolaki, Magda and Clarimon, Jordi and Sussams, Rebecca and Lovestone, Simon and O{\textquoteright}Donovan, Michael C and Owen, Michael J and Behrens, Timothy W and Mead, Simon and Goate, Alison M and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Holmes, Clive and Cruchaga, Carlos and Ingelsson, Martin and Bennett, David A and Powell, John and Golde, Todd E and Graff, Caroline and De Jager, Philip L and Morgan, Kevin and Ertekin-Taner, Nilufer and Combarros, Onofre and Psaty, Bruce M and Passmore, Peter and Younkin, Steven G and Berr, Claudine and Gudnason, Vilmundur and Rujescu, Dan and Dickson, Dennis W and Dartigues, Jean-Fran{\c c}ois and DeStefano, Anita L and Ortega-Cubero, Sara and Hakonarson, Hakon and Campion, Dominique and Boada, Merce and Kauwe, John Keoni and Farrer, Lindsay A and Van Broeckhoven, Christine and Ikram, M Arfan and Jones, Lesley and Haines, Jonathan L and Tzourio, Christophe and Launer, Lenore J and Escott-Price, Valentina and Mayeux, Richard and Deleuze, Jean-Francois and Amin, Najaf and Holmans, Peter A and Pericak-Vance, Margaret A and Amouyel, Philippe and van Duijn, Cornelia M and Ramirez, Alfredo and Wang, Li-San and Lambert, Jean-Charles and Seshadri, Sudha and Williams, Julie and Schellenberg, Gerard D} } @article {7928, title = {Large-scale whole-exome sequencing association studies identify rare functional variants influencing serum urate levels.}, journal = {Nat Commun}, volume = {9}, year = {2018}, month = {2018 10 12}, pages = {4228}, abstract = {

Elevated serum urate levels can cause gout, an excruciating disease with suboptimal treatment. Previous GWAS identified common variants with modest effects on serum urate. Here we report large-scale whole-exome sequencing association studies of serum urate and kidney function among <=19,517 European ancestry and African-American individuals. We identify aggregate associations of low-frequency damaging variants in the urate transporters SLC22A12 (URAT1; p = 1.3 {\texttimes} 10) and SLC2A9 (p = 4.5 {\texttimes} 10). Gout risk in rare SLC22A12 variant carriers is halved (OR = 0.5, p = 4.9 {\texttimes} 10). Selected rare variants in SLC22A12 are validated in transport studies, confirming three as loss-of-function (R325W, R405C, and T467M) and illustrating the therapeutic potential of the new URAT1-blocker lesinurad. In SLC2A9, mapping of rare variants of large effects onto the predicted protein structure reveals new residues that may affect urate binding. These findings provide new insights into the genetic architecture of serum urate, and highlight molecular targets in SLC22A12 and SLC2A9 for lowering serum urate and preventing gout.

}, keywords = {Exome, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Glucose Transport Proteins, Facilitative, Humans, Kidney Function Tests, Meta-Analysis as Topic, Organic Anion Transporters, Organic Cation Transport Proteins, Protein Structure, Secondary, Uric Acid}, issn = {2041-1723}, doi = {10.1038/s41467-018-06620-4}, author = {Tin, Adrienne and Li, Yong and Brody, Jennifer A and Nutile, Teresa and Chu, Audrey Y and Huffman, Jennifer E and Yang, Qiong and Chen, Ming-Huei and Robinson-Cohen, Cassianne and Mace, Aurelien and Liu, Jun and Demirkan, Ayse and Sorice, Rossella and Sedaghat, Sanaz and Swen, Melody and Yu, Bing and Ghasemi, Sahar and Teumer, Alexanda and Vollenweider, Peter and Ciullo, Marina and Li, Meng and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Kraaij, Robert and Amin, Najaf and van Rooij, Jeroen and Kutalik, Zolt{\'a}n and Dehghan, Abbas and McKnight, Barbara and van Duijn, Cornelia M and Morrison, Alanna and Psaty, Bruce M and Boerwinkle, Eric and Fox, Caroline S and Woodward, Owen M and K{\"o}ttgen, Anna} } @article {8507, title = {Blood Leukocyte DNA Methylation Predicts Risk of Future Myocardial Infarction and Coronary Heart Disease.}, journal = {Circulation}, volume = {140}, year = {2019}, month = {2019 08 20}, pages = {645-657}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: DNA methylation is implicated in coronary heart disease (CHD), but current evidence is based on small, cross-sectional studies. We examined blood DNA methylation in relation to incident CHD across multiple prospective cohorts.

METHODS: Nine population-based cohorts from the United States and Europe profiled epigenome-wide blood leukocyte DNA methylation using the Illumina Infinium 450k microarray, and prospectively ascertained CHD events including coronary insufficiency/unstable angina, recognized myocardial infarction, coronary revascularization, and coronary death. Cohorts conducted race-specific analyses adjusted for age, sex, smoking, education, body mass index, blood cell type proportions, and technical variables. We conducted fixed-effect meta-analyses across cohorts.

RESULTS: Among 11 461 individuals (mean age 64 years, 67\% women, 35\% African American) free of CHD at baseline, 1895 developed CHD during a mean follow-up of 11.2 years. Methylation levels at 52 CpG (cytosine-phosphate-guanine) sites were associated with incident CHD or myocardial infarction (false discovery rate<0.05). These CpGs map to genes with key roles in calcium regulation (ATP2B2, CASR, GUCA1B, HPCAL1), and genes identified in genome- and epigenome-wide studies of serum calcium (CASR), serum calcium-related risk of CHD (CASR), coronary artery calcified plaque (PTPRN2), and kidney function (CDH23, HPCAL1), among others. Mendelian randomization analyses supported a causal effect of DNA methylation on incident CHD; these CpGs map to active regulatory regions proximal to long non-coding RNA transcripts.

CONCLUSION: Methylation of blood-derived DNA is associated with risk of future CHD across diverse populations and may serve as an informative tool for gaining further insight on the development of CHD.

}, keywords = {Adult, Aged, Cohort Studies, Coronary Disease, CpG Islands, DNA Methylation, Europe, Female, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Incidence, Leukocytes, Male, Middle Aged, Myocardial Infarction, Population Groups, Prognosis, Prospective Studies, Risk, United States}, issn = {1524-4539}, doi = {10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.118.039357}, author = {Agha, Golareh and Mendelson, Michael M and Ward-Caviness, Cavin K and Joehanes, Roby and Huan, Tianxiao and Gondalia, Rahul and Salfati, Elias and Brody, Jennifer A and Fiorito, Giovanni and Bressler, Jan and Chen, Brian H and Ligthart, Symen and Guarrera, Simonetta and Colicino, Elena and Just, Allan C and Wahl, Simone and Gieger, Christian and Vandiver, Amy R and Tanaka, Toshiko and Hernandez, Dena G and Pilling, Luke C and Singleton, Andrew B and Sacerdote, Carlotta and Krogh, Vittorio and Panico, Salvatore and Tumino, Rosario and Li, Yun and Zhang, Guosheng and Stewart, James D and Floyd, James S and Wiggins, Kerri L and Rotter, Jerome I and Multhaup, Michael and Bakulski, Kelly and Horvath, Steven and Tsao, Philip S and Absher, Devin M and Vokonas, Pantel and Hirschhorn, Joel and Fallin, M Daniele and Liu, Chunyu and Bandinelli, Stefania and Boerwinkle, Eric and Dehghan, Abbas and Schwartz, Joel D and Psaty, Bruce M and Feinberg, Andrew P and Hou, Lifang and Ferrucci, Luigi and Sotoodehnia, Nona and Matullo, Giuseppe and Peters, Annette and Fornage, Myriam and Assimes, Themistocles L and Whitsel, Eric A and Levy, Daniel and Baccarelli, Andrea A} } @article {8508, title = {Genomewide Association Study of Statin-Induced Myopathy in Patients Recruited Using the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink.}, journal = {Clin Pharmacol Ther}, volume = {106}, year = {2019}, month = {2019 12}, pages = {1353-1361}, abstract = {

Statins can be associated with myopathy. We have undertaken a genomewide association study (GWAS) to discover and validate genetic risk factors for statin-induced myopathy in a "real-world" setting. One hundred thirty-five patients with statin myopathy recruited via the UK Clinical Practice Research Datalink were genotyped using the Illumina OmniExpress Exome version 1.0 Bead Chip and compared with the Wellcome Trust Case-Control Consortium (n~=~2,501). Nominally statistically significant single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) signals in the GWAS (P~<~5~{\texttimes}~10 ) were further evaluated in several independent cohorts (comprising 332 cases and 449 drug-tolerant controls). Only one (rs4149056/c.521C>T in the SLCO1B1 gene) SNP was genomewide significant in the severe myopathy (creatine kinase~>~10~{\texttimes}~upper limit of normal or rhabdomyolysis) group (P~=~2.55~{\texttimes}~10 ; odds ratio 5.15; 95\% confidence interval 3.13-8.45). The association with SLCO1B1 was present for several statins and replicated in the independent validation cohorts. The data highlight the role of SLCO1B1 c.521C>T SNP as a replicable genetic risk factor for statin myopathy. No other novel genetic risk factors with a similar effect size were identified.

}, keywords = {Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting Systems, Case-Control Studies, Databases, Factual, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Hydroxymethylglutaryl-CoA Reductase Inhibitors, Liver-Specific Organic Anion Transporter 1, Muscular Diseases, Pharmacogenomic Variants, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Reproducibility of Results, Risk Factors, Severity of Illness Index, United Kingdom}, issn = {1532-6535}, doi = {10.1002/cpt.1557}, author = {Carr, Daniel F and Francis, Ben and Jorgensen, Andrea L and Zhang, Eunice and Chinoy, Hector and Heckbert, Susan R and Bis, Joshua C and Brody, Jennifer A and Floyd, James S and Psaty, Bruce M and Molokhia, Mariam and Lapeyre-Mestre, Maryse and Conforti, Anita and Alfirevic, Ana and van Staa, Tjeerd and Pirmohamed, Munir} } @article {8511, title = {Genome-wide meta-analysis of SNP and antihypertensive medication interactions on left ventricular traits in African Americans.}, journal = {Mol Genet Genomic Med}, volume = {7}, year = {2019}, month = {2019 10}, pages = {e00788}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: Left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy affects up to 43\% of African Americans (AAs). Antihypertensive treatment reduces LV mass (LVM). However, interindividual variation in LV traits in response to antihypertensive treatments exists. We hypothesized that genetic variants may modify the association of antihypertensive treatment class with LV traits measured by echocardiography.

METHODS: We evaluated the main effects of the three most common antihypertensive treatments for AAs as well as the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-by-drug interaction on LVM and relative wall thickness (RWT) in 2,068 participants across five community-based cohorts. Treatments included thiazide diuretics (TDs), angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACE-Is), and dihydropyridine calcium channel blockers (dCCBs) and were compared in a pairwise manner. We performed fixed effects inverse variance weighted meta-analyses of main effects of drugs and 2.5~million SNP-by-drug interaction estimates.

RESULTS: We observed that dCCBs versus TDs were associated with higher LVM after adjusting for covariates (p~=~0.001). We report three SNPs at a single locus on chromosome 20 that modified the association between RWT and treatment when comparing dCCBs to ACE-Is with consistent effects across cohorts (smallest p~=~4.7~{\texttimes}~10 , minor allele frequency range 0.09-0.12). This locus has been linked to LV hypertrophy in a previous study. A marginally significant locus in BICD1 (rs326641) was validated in an external population.

CONCLUSIONS: Our study identified one locus having genome-wide significant SNP-by-drug interaction effect on RWT among dCCB users in comparison to ACE-I users. Upon additional validation in future studies, our findings can enhance the precision of medical approaches in hypertension treatment.

}, keywords = {African Americans, Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitors, Antihypertensive Agents, Calcium Channel Blockers, Humans, Observational Studies as Topic, Pharmacogenomic Variants, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Sodium Chloride Symporter Inhibitors, Ventricular Dysfunction, Left}, issn = {2324-9269}, doi = {10.1002/mgg3.788}, author = {Do, Anh N and Zhao, Wei and Baldridge, Abigail S and Raffield, Laura M and Wiggins, Kerri L and Shah, Sanjiv J and Aslibekyan, Stella and Tiwari, Hemant K and Limdi, Nita and Zhi, Degui and Sitlani, Colleen M and Taylor, Kent D and Psaty, Bruce M and Sotoodehnia, Nona and Brody, Jennifer A and Rasmussen-Torvik, Laura J and Lloyd-Jones, Donald and Lange, Leslie A and Wilson, James G and Smith, Jennifer A and Kardia, Sharon L R and Mosley, Thomas H and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Arnett, Donna K and Irvin, Marguerite R} } @article {8625, title = {Genetic loci associated with prevalent and incident myocardial infarction and coronary heart disease in the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium.}, journal = {PLoS One}, volume = {15}, year = {2020}, month = {2020}, pages = {e0230035}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: Genome-wide association studies have identified multiple genomic loci associated with coronary artery disease, but most are common variants in non-coding regions that provide limited information on causal genes and etiology of the disease. To overcome the limited scope that common variants provide, we focused our investigation on low-frequency and rare sequence variations primarily residing in coding regions of the genome.

METHODS AND RESULTS: Using samples of individuals of European ancestry from ten cohorts within the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium, both cross-sectional and prospective analyses were conducted to examine associations between genetic variants and myocardial infarction (MI), coronary heart disease (CHD), and all-cause mortality following these events. For prevalent events, a total of 27,349 participants of European ancestry, including 1831 prevalent MI cases and 2518 prevalent CHD cases were used. For incident cases, a total of 55,736 participants of European ancestry were included (3,031 incident MI cases and 5,425 incident CHD cases). There were 1,860 all-cause deaths among the 3,751 MI and CHD cases from six cohorts that contributed to the analysis of all-cause mortality. Single variant and gene-based analyses were performed separately in each cohort and then meta-analyzed for each outcome. A low-frequency intronic variant (rs988583) in PLCL1 was significantly associated with prevalent MI (OR = 1.80, 95\% confidence interval: 1.43, 2.27; P = 7.12 {\texttimes} 10-7). We conducted gene-based burden tests for genes with a cumulative minor allele count (cMAC) >= 5 and variants with minor allele frequency (MAF) < 5\%. TMPRSS5 and LDLRAD1 were significantly associated with prevalent MI and CHD, respectively, and RC3H2 and ANGPTL4 were significantly associated with incident MI and CHD, respectively. No loci were significantly associated with all-cause mortality following a MI or CHD event.

CONCLUSION: This study identified one known locus (ANGPTL4) and four new loci (PLCL1, RC3H2, TMPRSS5, and LDLRAD1) associated with cardiovascular disease risk that warrant further investigation.

}, keywords = {Aging, Coronary Artery Disease, Cross-Sectional Studies, Europe, European Continental Ancestry Group, Genetic Loci, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Myocardial Infarction, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Prospective Studies}, issn = {1932-6203}, doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0230035}, author = {Hahn, Julie and Fu, Yi-Ping and Brown, Michael R and Bis, Joshua C and de Vries, Paul S and Feitosa, Mary F and Yanek, Lisa R and Weiss, Stefan and Giulianini, Franco and Smith, Albert Vernon and Guo, Xiuqing and Bartz, Traci M and Becker, Diane M and Becker, Lewis C and Boerwinkle, Eric and Brody, Jennifer A and Chen, Yii-Der Ida and Franco, Oscar H and Grove, Megan and Harris, Tamara B and Hofman, Albert and Hwang, Shih-Jen and Kral, Brian G and Launer, Lenore J and Markus, Marcello R P and Rice, Kenneth M and Rich, Stephen S and Ridker, Paul M and Rivadeneira, Fernando and Rotter, Jerome I and Sotoodehnia, Nona and Taylor, Kent D and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and V{\"o}lker, Uwe and V{\"o}lzke, Henry and Yao, Jie and Chasman, Daniel I and D{\"o}rr, Marcus and Gudnason, Vilmundur and Mathias, Rasika A and Post, Wendy and Psaty, Bruce M and Dehghan, Abbas and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Christopher J and Morrison, Alanna C} } @article {9001, title = {Epigenetic Age and the Risk of Incident Atrial Fibrillation.}, journal = {Circulation}, volume = {144}, year = {2021}, month = {2021 12 14}, pages = {1899-1911}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: The most prominent risk factor for atrial fibrillation (AF) is chronological age; however, underlying mechanisms are unexplained. Algorithms using epigenetic modifications to the human genome effectively predict chronological age. Chronological and epigenetic predicted ages may diverge in a phenomenon referred to as epigenetic age acceleration (EAA), which may reflect accelerated biological aging. We sought to evaluate for associations between epigenetic age measures and incident AF.

METHODS: Measures for 4 epigenetic clocks (Horvath, Hannum, DNA methylation [DNAm] PhenoAge, and DNAm GrimAge) and an epigenetic predictor of PAI-1 (plasminogen activator inhibitor-1) levels (ie, DNAm PAI-1) were determined for study participants from 3 population-based cohort studies. Cox models evaluated for associations with incident AF and results were combined via random-effects meta-analyses. Two-sample summary-level Mendelian randomization analyses evaluated for associations between genetic instruments of the EAA measures and AF.

RESULTS: Among 5600 participants (mean age, 65.5 years; female, 60.1\%; Black, 50.7\%), there were 905 incident AF cases during a mean follow-up of 12.9 years. Unadjusted analyses revealed all 4 epigenetic clocks and the DNAm PAI-1 predictor were associated with statistically significant higher hazards of incident AF, though the magnitudes of their point estimates were smaller relative to the associations observed for chronological age. The pooled EAA estimates for each epigenetic measure, with the exception of Horvath EAA, were associated with incident AF in models adjusted for chronological age, race, sex, and smoking variables. After multivariable adjustment for additional known AF risk factors that could also potentially function as mediators, pooled EAA measures for 2 clocks remained statistically significant. Five-year increases in EAA measures for DNAm GrimAge and DNAm PhenoAge were associated with 19\% (adjusted hazard ratio [HR], 1.19 [95\% CI, 1.09-1.31]; <0.01) and 15\% (adjusted HR, 1.15 [95\% CI, 1.05-1.25]; <0.01) higher hazards of incident AF, respectively. Mendelian randomization analyses for the 5 EAA measures did not reveal statistically significant associations with AF.

CONCLUSIONS: Our study identified adjusted associations between EAA measures and incident AF, suggesting that biological aging plays an important role independent of chronological age, though a potential underlying causal relationship remains unclear. These aging processes may be modifiable and not constrained by the immutable factor of time.

}, keywords = {Aged, Aging, Atrial Fibrillation, DNA Methylation, Epigenesis, Genetic, Epigenomics, Female, Follow-Up Studies, Humans, Incidence, Male, Mendelian Randomization Analysis, Middle Aged, Models, Cardiovascular, Models, Genetic}, issn = {1524-4539}, doi = {10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.121.056456}, author = {Roberts, Jason D and Vittinghoff, Eric and Lu, Ake T and Alonso, Alvaro and Wang, Biqi and Sitlani, Colleen M and Mohammadi-Shemirani, Pedrum and Fornage, Myriam and Kornej, Jelena and Brody, Jennifer A and Arking, Dan E and Lin, Honghuang and Heckbert, Susan R and Prokic, Ivana and Ghanbari, Mohsen and Skanes, Allan C and Bartz, Traci M and Perez, Marco V and Taylor, Kent D and Lubitz, Steven A and Ellinor, Patrick T and Lunetta, Kathryn L and Pankow, James S and Par{\'e}, Guillaume and Sotoodehnia, Nona and Benjamin, Emelia J and Horvath, Steve and Marcus, Gregory 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 {9167, title = {Endophenotype effect sizes support variant pathogenicity in monogenic disease susceptibility genes.}, journal = {Nat Commun}, volume = {13}, year = {2022}, month = {2022 08 30}, pages = {5106}, abstract = {

Accurate and efficient classification of variant pathogenicity is critical for research and clinical care. Using data from three large studies, we demonstrate that population-based associations between rare variants and quantitative endophenotypes for three monogenic diseases (low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol for familial hypercholesterolemia, electrocardiographic QTc interval for long QT syndrome, and glycosylated hemoglobin for maturity-onset diabetes of the young) provide evidence for variant pathogenicity. Effect sizes are associated with pathogenic ClinVar assertions (P < 0.001 for each trait) and discriminate pathogenic from non-pathogenic variants (area under the curve 0.82-0.84 across endophenotypes). An effect size threshold of >= 0.5 times the endophenotype standard deviation nominates up to 35\% of rare variants of uncertain significance or not in ClinVar in disease susceptibility genes with pathogenic potential. We propose that variant associations with quantitative endophenotypes for monogenic diseases can provide evidence supporting pathogenicity.

}, keywords = {Disease Susceptibility, Endophenotypes, Humans, Long QT Syndrome, Virulence}, issn = {2041-1723}, doi = {10.1038/s41467-022-32009-5}, author = {Halford, Jennifer L and Morrill, Valerie N and Choi, Seung Hoan and Jurgens, Sean J and Melloni, Giorgio and Marston, Nicholas A and Weng, Lu-Chen and Nauffal, Victor and Hall, Amelia W and Gunn, Sophia and Austin-Tse, Christina A and Pirruccello, James P and Khurshid, Shaan and Rehm, Heidi L and Benjamin, Emelia J and Boerwinkle, Eric and Brody, Jennifer A and Correa, Adolfo and Fornwalt, Brandon K and Gupta, Namrata and Haggerty, Christopher M and Harris, Stephanie and Heckbert, Susan R and Hong, Charles C and Kooperberg, Charles and Lin, Henry J and Loos, Ruth J F and Mitchell, Braxton D and Morrison, Alanna C and Post, Wendy and Psaty, Bruce M and Redline, Susan and Rice, Kenneth M and Rich, Stephen S and Rotter, Jerome I and Schnatz, Peter F and Soliman, Elsayed Z and Sotoodehnia, Nona and Wong, Eugene K and Sabatine, Marc S and Ruff, Christian T and Lunetta, Kathryn L and Ellinor, Patrick T and Lubitz, Steven A} } @article {9253, title = {A framework for detecting noncoding rare-variant associations of large-scale whole-genome sequencing studies.}, journal = {Nat Methods}, volume = {19}, year = {2022}, month = {2022 Dec}, pages = {1599-1611}, abstract = {

Large-scale whole-genome sequencing studies have enabled analysis of noncoding rare-variant (RV) associations with complex human diseases and traits. Variant-set analysis is a powerful approach to study RV association. However, existing methods have limited ability in analyzing the noncoding genome. We propose a computationally efficient and robust noncoding RV association detection framework, STAARpipeline, to automatically annotate a whole-genome sequencing study and perform flexible noncoding RV association analysis, including gene-centric analysis and fixed window-based and dynamic window-based non-gene-centric analysis by incorporating variant functional annotations. In gene-centric analysis, STAARpipeline uses STAAR to group noncoding variants based on functional categories of genes and incorporate multiple functional annotations. In non-gene-centric analysis, STAARpipeline uses SCANG-STAAR to incorporate dynamic window sizes and multiple functional annotations. We apply STAARpipeline to identify noncoding RV sets associated with four lipid traits in 21,015 discovery samples from the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program and replicate several of them in an additional 9,123 TOPMed samples. We also analyze five non-lipid TOPMed traits.

}, keywords = {Genetic Variation, Genome, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Phenotype, Whole Genome Sequencing}, issn = {1548-7105}, doi = {10.1038/s41592-022-01640-x}, author = {Li, Zilin and Li, Xihao and Zhou, Hufeng and Gaynor, Sheila M and Selvaraj, Margaret Sunitha and Arapoglou, Theodore and Quick, Corbin and Liu, Yaowu and Chen, Han and Sun, Ryan and Dey, Rounak and Arnett, Donna K and Auer, Paul L and Bielak, Lawrence F and Bis, Joshua C and Blackwell, Thomas W and Blangero, John and Boerwinkle, Eric and Bowden, Donald W and Brody, Jennifer A and Cade, Brian E and Conomos, Matthew P and Correa, Adolfo and Cupples, L Adrienne and Curran, Joanne E and de Vries, Paul S and Duggirala, Ravindranath and Franceschini, Nora and Freedman, Barry I and G{\"o}ring, Harald H H and Guo, Xiuqing and Kalyani, Rita R and Kooperberg, Charles and Kral, Brian G and Lange, Leslie A and Lin, Bridget M and Manichaikul, Ani and Manning, Alisa K and Martin, Lisa W and Mathias, Rasika A and Meigs, James B and Mitchell, Braxton D and Montasser, May E and Morrison, Alanna C and Naseri, Take and O{\textquoteright}Connell, Jeffrey R and Palmer, Nicholette D and Peyser, Patricia A and Psaty, Bruce M and Raffield, Laura M and Redline, Susan and Reiner, Alexander P and Reupena, Muagututi{\textquoteright}a Sefuiva and Rice, Kenneth M and Rich, Stephen S and Smith, Jennifer A and Taylor, Kent D and Taub, Margaret A and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Weeks, Daniel E and Wilson, James G and Yanek, Lisa R and Zhao, Wei and Rotter, Jerome I and Willer, Cristen J and Natarajan, Pradeep and Peloso, Gina M and Lin, Xihong} } @article {9094, title = {Integrative analysis of clinical and epigenetic biomarkers of mortality.}, journal = {Aging Cell}, volume = {21}, year = {2022}, month = {2022 Jun}, pages = {e13608}, abstract = {

DNA methylation (DNAm) has been reported to be associated with many diseases and with mortality. We hypothesized that the integration of DNAm with clinical risk factors would improve mortality prediction. We performed an epigenome-wide association study of whole blood DNAm in relation to mortality in 15 cohorts (n~=~15,013). During a mean follow-up of 10~years, there were 4314 deaths from all causes including 1235 cardiovascular disease (CVD) deaths and 868 cancer deaths. Ancestry-stratified meta-analysis of all-cause mortality identified 163 CpGs in European ancestry (EA) and 17 in African ancestry (AA) participants at p~<~1~{\texttimes}~10 , of which 41 (EA) and 16 (AA) were also associated with CVD death, and 15 (EA) and 9 (AA) with cancer death. We built DNAm-based prediction models for all-cause mortality that predicted mortality risk after adjusting for clinical risk factors. The mortality prediction model trained by integrating DNAm with clinical risk factors showed an improvement in prediction of cancer death with 5\% increase in the C-index in a replication cohort, compared with the model including clinical risk factors alone. Mendelian randomization identified 15 putatively causal CpGs in relation to longevity, CVD, or cancer risk. For example, cg06885782 (in KCNQ4) was positively associated with risk for prostate cancer (Beta~=~1.2, P ~=~4.1~{\texttimes}~10 ) and negatively associated with longevity (Beta~=~-1.9, P ~=~0.02). Pathway analysis revealed that genes associated with mortality-related CpGs are enriched for immune- and cancer-related pathways. We identified replicable DNAm signatures of mortality and demonstrated the potential utility of CpGs as informative biomarkers for prediction of mortality risk.

}, keywords = {Biomarkers, Cardiovascular Diseases, DNA Methylation, Epigenesis, Genetic, Epigenomics, Humans, Male, Neoplasms}, issn = {1474-9726}, doi = {10.1111/acel.13608}, author = {Huan, Tianxiao and Nguyen, Steve and Colicino, Elena and Ochoa-Rosales, Carolina and Hill, W David and Brody, Jennifer A and Soerensen, Mette and Zhang, Yan and Baldassari, Antoine and Elhadad, Mohamed Ahmed and Toshiko, Tanaka and Zheng, Yinan and Domingo-Relloso, Arce and Lee, Dong Heon and Ma, Jiantao and Yao, Chen and Liu, Chunyu and Hwang, Shih-Jen and Joehanes, Roby and Fornage, Myriam and Bressler, Jan and van Meurs, Joyce B J and Debrabant, Birgit and Mengel-From, Jonas and Hjelmborg, Jacob and Christensen, Kaare and Vokonas, Pantel and Schwartz, Joel and Gahrib, Sina A and Sotoodehnia, Nona and Sitlani, Colleen M and Kunze, Sonja and Gieger, Christian and Peters, Annette and Waldenberger, Melanie and Deary, Ian J and Ferrucci, Luigi and Qu, Yishu and Greenland, Philip and Lloyd-Jones, Donald M and Hou, Lifang and Bandinelli, Stefania and Voortman, Trudy and Hermann, Brenner and Baccarelli, Andrea and Whitsel, Eric and Pankow, James S and Levy, Daniel} } @article {9104, title = {Multi-ancestry genetic study of type 2 diabetes highlights the power of diverse populations for discovery and translation.}, journal = {Nat Genet}, volume = {54}, year = {2022}, month = {2022 May}, pages = {560-572}, abstract = {

We assembled an ancestrally diverse collection of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of type 2 diabetes (T2D) in 180,834 affected individuals and 1,159,055 controls (48.9\% non-European descent) through the Diabetes Meta-Analysis of Trans-Ethnic association studies (DIAMANTE) Consortium. Multi-ancestry GWAS meta-analysis identified 237 loci attaining stringent genome-wide significance (P < 5 {\texttimes} 10), which were delineated to 338 distinct association signals. Fine-mapping of these signals was enhanced by the increased sample size and expanded population diversity of the multi-ancestry meta-analysis, which localized 54.4\% of T2D associations to a single variant with >50\% posterior probability. This improved fine-mapping enabled systematic assessment of candidate causal genes and molecular mechanisms through which T2D associations are mediated, laying the foundations for functional investigations. Multi-ancestry genetic risk scores enhanced transferability of T2D prediction across diverse populations. Our study provides a step toward more effective clinical translation of T2D GWAS to improve global health for all, irrespective of genetic background.

}, keywords = {Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Ethnicity, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Risk Factors}, issn = {1546-1718}, doi = {10.1038/s41588-022-01058-3}, author = {Mahajan, Anubha and Spracklen, Cassandra N and Zhang, Weihua and Ng, Maggie C Y and Petty, Lauren E and Kitajima, Hidetoshi and Yu, Grace Z and R{\"u}eger, Sina and Speidel, Leo and Kim, Young Jin and Horikoshi, Momoko and Mercader, Josep M and Taliun, Daniel and Moon, Sanghoon and Kwak, Soo-Heon and Robertson, Neil R and Rayner, Nigel W and Loh, Marie and Kim, Bong-Jo and Chiou, Joshua and Miguel-Escalada, Irene and Della Briotta Parolo, Pietro and Lin, Kuang and Bragg, Fiona and Preuss, Michael H and Takeuchi, Fumihiko and Nano, Jana and Guo, Xiuqing and Lamri, Amel and Nakatochi, Masahiro and Scott, Robert A and Lee, Jung-Jin and Huerta-Chagoya, Alicia and Graff, Mariaelisa and Chai, Jin-Fang and Parra, Esteban J and Yao, Jie and Bielak, Lawrence F and Tabara, Yasuharu and Hai, Yang and Steinthorsdottir, Valgerdur and Cook, James P and Kals, Mart and Grarup, Niels and Schmidt, Ellen M and Pan, Ian and Sofer, Tamar and Wuttke, Matthias and Sarnowski, Chloe and Gieger, Christian and Nousome, Darryl and Trompet, Stella and Long, Jirong and Sun, Meng and Tong, Lin and Chen, Wei-Min and Ahmad, Meraj and Noordam, Raymond and Lim, Victor J Y and Tam, Claudia H T and Joo, Yoonjung Yoonie and Chen, Chien-Hsiun and Raffield, Laura M and Lecoeur, C{\'e}cile and Prins, Bram Peter and Nicolas, Aude and Yanek, Lisa R and Chen, Guanjie and Jensen, Richard A and Tajuddin, Salman and Kabagambe, Edmond K and An, Ping and Xiang, Anny H and Choi, Hyeok Sun and Cade, Brian E and Tan, Jingyi and Flanagan, Jack and Abaitua, Fernando and Adair, Linda S and Adeyemo, Adebowale and Aguilar-Salinas, Carlos A and Akiyama, Masato and Anand, Sonia S and Bertoni, Alain and Bian, Zheng and Bork-Jensen, Jette and Brandslund, Ivan and Brody, Jennifer A and Brummett, Chad M and Buchanan, Thomas A and Canouil, Micka{\"e}l and Chan, Juliana C N and Chang, Li-Ching and Chee, Miao-Li and Chen, Ji and Chen, Shyh-Huei and Chen, Yuan-Tsong and Chen, Zhengming and Chuang, Lee-Ming and Cushman, Mary and Das, Swapan K and de Silva, H Janaka and Dedoussis, George and Dimitrov, Latchezar and Doumatey, Ayo P and Du, Shufa and Duan, Qing and Eckardt, Kai-Uwe and Emery, Leslie S and Evans, Daniel S and Evans, Michele K and Fischer, Krista and Floyd, James S and Ford, Ian and Fornage, Myriam and Franco, Oscar H and Frayling, Timothy M and Freedman, Barry I and Fuchsberger, Christian and Genter, Pauline and Gerstein, Hertzel C and Giedraitis, Vilmantas and Gonz{\'a}lez-Villalpando, Clicerio and Gonzalez-Villalpando, Maria Elena and Goodarzi, Mark O and Gordon-Larsen, Penny and Gorkin, David and Gross, Myron and Guo, Yu and Hackinger, Sophie and Han, Sohee and Hattersley, Andrew T and Herder, Christian and Howard, Annie-Green and Hsueh, Willa and Huang, Mengna and Huang, Wei and Hung, Yi-Jen and Hwang, Mi Yeong and Hwu, Chii-Min and Ichihara, Sahoko and Ikram, Mohammad Arfan and Ingelsson, Martin and Islam, Md Tariqul and Isono, Masato and Jang, Hye-Mi and Jasmine, Farzana and Jiang, Guozhi and Jonas, Jost B and J{\o}rgensen, Marit E and J{\o}rgensen, Torben and Kamatani, Yoichiro and Kandeel, Fouad R and Kasturiratne, Anuradhani and Katsuya, Tomohiro and Kaur, Varinderpal and Kawaguchi, Takahisa and Keaton, Jacob M and Kho, Abel N and Khor, Chiea-Chuen and Kibriya, Muhammad G and Kim, Duk-Hwan and Kohara, Katsuhiko and Kriebel, Jennifer and Kronenberg, Florian and Kuusisto, Johanna and L{\"a}ll, Kristi and Lange, Leslie A and Lee, Myung-Shik and Lee, Nanette R and Leong, Aaron and Li, Liming and Li, Yun and Li-Gao, Ruifang and Ligthart, Symen and Lindgren, Cecilia M and Linneberg, Allan and Liu, Ching-Ti and Liu, Jianjun and Locke, Adam E and Louie, Tin and Luan, Jian{\textquoteright}an and Luk, Andrea O and Luo, Xi and Lv, Jun and Lyssenko, Valeriya and Mamakou, Vasiliki and Mani, K Radha and Meitinger, Thomas and Metspalu, Andres and Morris, Andrew D and Nadkarni, Girish N and Nadler, Jerry L and Nalls, Michael A and Nayak, Uma and Nongmaithem, Suraj S and Ntalla, Ioanna and Okada, Yukinori and Orozco, Lorena and Patel, Sanjay R and Pereira, Mark A and Peters, Annette and Pirie, Fraser J and Porneala, Bianca and Prasad, Gauri and Preissl, Sebastian and Rasmussen-Torvik, Laura J and Reiner, Alexander P and Roden, Michael and Rohde, Rebecca and Roll, Kathryn and Sabanayagam, Charumathi and Sander, Maike and Sandow, Kevin and Sattar, Naveed and Sch{\"o}nherr, Sebastian and Schurmann, Claudia and Shahriar, Mohammad and Shi, Jinxiu and Shin, Dong Mun and Shriner, Daniel and Smith, Jennifer A and So, Wing Yee and Stan{\v c}{\'a}kov{\'a}, Alena and Stilp, Adrienne M and Strauch, Konstantin and Suzuki, Ken and Takahashi, Atsushi and Taylor, Kent D and Thorand, Barbara and Thorleifsson, Gudmar and Thorsteinsdottir, Unnur and Tomlinson, Brian and Torres, Jason M and Tsai, Fuu-Jen and Tuomilehto, Jaakko and Tusi{\'e}-Luna, Teresa and Udler, Miriam S and Valladares-Salgado, Adan and van Dam, Rob M and van Klinken, Jan B and Varma, Rohit and Vujkovic, Marijana and Wacher-Rodarte, Niels and Wheeler, Eleanor and Whitsel, Eric A and Wickremasinghe, Ananda R and van Dijk, Ko Willems and Witte, Daniel R and Yajnik, Chittaranjan S and Yamamoto, Ken and Yamauchi, Toshimasa and Yengo, Loic and Yoon, Kyungheon and Yu, Canqing and Yuan, Jian-Min and Yusuf, Salim and Zhang, Liang and Zheng, Wei and Raffel, Leslie J and Igase, Michiya and Ipp, Eli and Redline, Susan and Cho, Yoon Shin and Lind, Lars and Province, Michael A and Hanis, Craig L and Peyser, Patricia A and Ingelsson, Erik and Zonderman, Alan B and Psaty, Bruce M and Wang, Ya-Xing and Rotimi, Charles N and Becker, Diane M and Matsuda, Fumihiko and Liu, Yongmei and Zeggini, Eleftheria and Yokota, Mitsuhiro and Rich, Stephen S and Kooperberg, Charles and Pankow, James S and Engert, James C and Chen, Yii-Der Ida and Froguel, Philippe and Wilson, James G and Sheu, Wayne H H and Kardia, Sharon L R and Wu, Jer-Yuarn and Hayes, M Geoffrey and Ma, Ronald C W and Wong, Tien-Yin and Groop, Leif and Mook-Kanamori, Dennis O and Chandak, Giriraj R and Collins, Francis S and Bharadwaj, Dwaipayan and Par{\'e}, Guillaume and Sale, Mich{\`e}le M and Ahsan, Habibul and Motala, Ayesha A and Shu, Xiao-Ou and Park, Kyong-Soo and Jukema, J Wouter and Cruz, Miguel and McKean-Cowdin, Roberta and Grallert, Harald and Cheng, Ching-Yu and Bottinger, Erwin P and Dehghan, Abbas and Tai, E-Shyong and Dupuis, Jos{\'e}e and Kato, Norihiro and Laakso, Markku and K{\"o}ttgen, Anna and Koh, Woon-Puay and Palmer, Colin N A and Liu, Simin and Abecasis, Goncalo and Kooner, Jaspal S and Loos, Ruth J F and North, Kari E and Haiman, Christopher A and Florez, Jose C and Saleheen, Danish and Hansen, Torben and Pedersen, Oluf and M{\"a}gi, Reedik and Langenberg, Claudia and Wareham, Nicholas J and Maeda, Shiro and Kadowaki, Takashi and Lee, Juyoung and Millwood, Iona Y and Walters, Robin G and Stefansson, Kari and Myers, Simon R and Ferrer, Jorge and Gaulton, Kyle J and Meigs, James B and Mohlke, Karen L and Gloyn, Anna L and Bowden, Donald W and Below, Jennifer E and Chambers, John C and Sim, Xueling and Boehnke, Michael and Rotter, Jerome I and McCarthy, Mark I and Morris, Andrew P} } @article {9161, title = {Non-linear machine learning models incorporating SNPs and PRS improve polygenic prediction in diverse human populations.}, journal = {Commun Biol}, volume = {5}, year = {2022}, month = {2022 08 22}, pages = {856}, abstract = {

Polygenic risk scores (PRS) are commonly used to quantify the inherited susceptibility for a trait, yet they fail to account for non-linear and interaction effects between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). We address this via a machine learning approach, validated in nine complex phenotypes in a multi-ancestry population. We use an ensemble method of SNP selection followed by gradient boosted trees (XGBoost) to allow for non-linearities and interaction effects. We compare our results to the standard, linear PRS model developed using PRSice, LDpred2, and lassosum2. Combining a PRS as a feature in an XGBoost model results in a relative increase in the percentage variance explained compared to the standard linear PRS model by 22\% for height, 27\% for HDL cholesterol, 43\% for body mass index, 50\% for sleep duration, 58\% for systolic blood pressure, 64\% for total cholesterol, 66\% for triglycerides, 77\% for LDL cholesterol, and 100\% for diastolic blood pressure. Multi-ancestry trained models perform similarly to specific racial/ethnic group trained models and are consistently superior to the standard linear PRS models. This work demonstrates an effective method to account for non-linearities and interaction effects in genetics-based prediction models.

}, keywords = {Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Machine Learning, Multifactorial Inheritance, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide}, issn = {2399-3642}, doi = {10.1038/s42003-022-03812-z}, author = {Elgart, Michael and Lyons, Genevieve and Romero-Brufau, Santiago and Kurniansyah, Nuzulul and Brody, Jennifer A and Guo, Xiuqing and Lin, Henry J and Raffield, Laura and Gao, Yan and Chen, Han and de Vries, Paul and Lloyd-Jones, Donald M and Lange, Leslie A and Peloso, Gina M and Fornage, Myriam and Rotter, Jerome I and Rich, Stephen S and Morrison, Alanna C and Psaty, Bruce M and Levy, Daniel and Redline, Susan and Sofer, Tamar} } @article {8975, title = {Rare coding variants in 35 genes associate with circulating lipid levels-A multi-ancestry analysis of 170,000 exomes.}, journal = {Am J Hum Genet}, volume = {109}, year = {2022}, month = {2022 01 06}, pages = {81-96}, abstract = {

Large-scale gene sequencing studies for complex traits have the potential to identify causal genes with therapeutic implications. We performed gene-based association testing of blood lipid levels with rare (minor allele frequency < 1\%) predicted damaging coding variation by using sequence data from >170,000 individuals from multiple ancestries: 97,493 European, 30,025 South Asian, 16,507 African, 16,440 Hispanic/Latino, 10,420 East Asian, and 1,182 Samoan. We identified 35 genes associated with circulating lipid levels; some of these genes have not been previously associated with lipid levels when using rare coding variation from population-based samples. We prioritize 32 genes in array-based genome-wide association study (GWAS) loci based on aggregations of rare coding variants; three (EVI5, SH2B3, and PLIN1) had no prior association of rare coding variants with lipid levels. Most of our associated genes showed evidence of association among multiple ancestries. Finally, we observed an enrichment of gene-based associations for low-density lipoprotein cholesterol drug target genes and for genes closest to GWAS index single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Our results demonstrate that gene-based associations can be beneficial for drug target development and provide evidence that the gene closest to the array-based GWAS index SNP is often the functional gene for blood lipid levels.

}, keywords = {Alleles, Blood Glucose, Case-Control Studies, Computational Biology, Databases, Genetic, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Exome, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genetic Variation, Genetics, Population, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Lipid Metabolism, Lipids, Liver, Molecular Sequence Annotation, Multifactorial Inheritance, Open Reading Frames, Phenotype, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide}, issn = {1537-6605}, doi = {10.1016/j.ajhg.2021.11.021}, author = {Hindy, George and Dornbos, Peter and Chaffin, Mark D and Liu, Dajiang J and Wang, Minxian and Selvaraj, Margaret Sunitha and Zhang, David and Park, Joseph and Aguilar-Salinas, Carlos A and Antonacci-Fulton, Lucinda and Ardissino, Diego and Arnett, Donna K and Aslibekyan, Stella and Atzmon, Gil and Ballantyne, Christie M and Barajas-Olmos, Francisco and Barzilai, Nir and Becker, Lewis C and Bielak, Lawrence F and Bis, Joshua C and Blangero, John and Boerwinkle, Eric and Bonnycastle, Lori L and Bottinger, Erwin and Bowden, Donald W and Bown, Matthew J and Brody, Jennifer A and Broome, Jai G and Burtt, Noel P and Cade, Brian E and Centeno-Cruz, Federico and Chan, Edmund and Chang, Yi-Cheng and Chen, Yii-der I and Cheng, Ching-Yu and Choi, Won Jung and Chowdhury, Rajiv and Contreras-Cubas, Cecilia and C{\'o}rdova, Emilio J and Correa, Adolfo and Cupples, L Adrienne and Curran, Joanne E and Danesh, John and de Vries, Paul S and DeFronzo, Ralph A and Doddapaneni, Harsha and Duggirala, Ravindranath and Dutcher, Susan K and Ellinor, Patrick T and Emery, Leslie S and Florez, Jose C and Fornage, Myriam and Freedman, Barry I and Fuster, Valentin and Garay-Sevilla, Ma Eugenia and Garc{\'\i}a-Ortiz, Humberto and Germer, Soren and Gibbs, Richard A and Gieger, Christian and Glaser, Benjamin and Gonzalez, Clicerio and Gonzalez-Villalpando, Maria Elena and Graff, Mariaelisa and Graham, Sarah E and Grarup, Niels and Groop, Leif C and Guo, Xiuqing and Gupta, Namrata and Han, Sohee and Hanis, Craig L and Hansen, Torben and He, Jiang and Heard-Costa, Nancy L and Hung, Yi-Jen and Hwang, Mi Yeong and Irvin, Marguerite R and Islas-Andrade, Sergio and Jarvik, Gail P and Kang, Hyun Min and Kardia, Sharon L R and Kelly, Tanika and Kenny, Eimear E and Khan, Alyna T and Kim, Bong-Jo and Kim, Ryan W and Kim, Young Jin and Koistinen, Heikki A and Kooperberg, Charles and Kuusisto, Johanna and Kwak, Soo Heon and Laakso, Markku and Lange, Leslie A and Lee, Jiwon and Lee, Juyoung and Lee, Seonwook and Lehman, Donna M and Lemaitre, Rozenn N and Linneberg, Allan and Liu, Jianjun and Loos, Ruth J F and Lubitz, Steven A and Lyssenko, Valeriya and Ma, Ronald C W and Martin, Lisa Warsinger and Mart{\'\i}nez-Hern{\'a}ndez, Ang{\'e}lica and Mathias, Rasika A and McGarvey, Stephen T and McPherson, Ruth and Meigs, James B and Meitinger, Thomas and Melander, Olle and Mendoza-Caamal, Elvia and Metcalf, Ginger A and Mi, Xuenan and Mohlke, Karen L and Montasser, May E and Moon, Jee-Young and Moreno-Macias, Hortensia and Morrison, Alanna C and Muzny, Donna M and Nelson, Sarah C and Nilsson, Peter M and O{\textquoteright}Connell, Jeffrey R and Orho-Melander, Marju and Orozco, Lorena and Palmer, Colin N A and Palmer, Nicholette D and Park, Cheol Joo and Park, Kyong Soo and Pedersen, Oluf and Peralta, Juan M and Peyser, Patricia A and Post, Wendy S and Preuss, Michael and Psaty, Bruce M and Qi, Qibin and Rao, D C and Redline, Susan and Reiner, Alexander P and Revilla-Monsalve, Cristina and Rich, Stephen S and Samani, Nilesh and Schunkert, Heribert and Schurmann, Claudia and Seo, Daekwan and Seo, Jeong-Sun and Sim, Xueling and Sladek, Rob and Small, Kerrin S and So, Wing Yee and Stilp, Adrienne M and Tai, E Shyong and Tam, Claudia H T and Taylor, Kent D and Teo, Yik Ying and Thameem, Farook and Tomlinson, Brian and Tsai, Michael Y and Tuomi, Tiinamaija and Tuomilehto, Jaakko and Tusi{\'e}-Luna, Teresa and Udler, Miriam S and van Dam, Rob M and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Viaud Martinez, Karine A and Wang, Fei Fei and Wang, Xuzhi and Watkins, Hugh and Weeks, Daniel E and Wilson, James G and Witte, Daniel R and Wong, Tien-Yin and Yanek, Lisa R and Kathiresan, Sekar and Rader, Daniel J and Rotter, Jerome I and Boehnke, Michael and McCarthy, Mark I and Willer, Cristen J and Natarajan, Pradeep and Flannick, Jason A and Khera, Amit V and Peloso, Gina M} } @article {9109, title = {The Value of Rare Genetic Variation in the Prediction of Common Obesity in European Ancestry Populations.}, journal = {Front Endocrinol (Lausanne)}, volume = {13}, year = {2022}, month = {2022}, pages = {863893}, abstract = {

Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) aggregate the effects of genetic variants across the genome and are used to predict risk of complex diseases, such as obesity. Current PRSs only include common variants (minor allele frequency (MAF) >=1\%), whereas the contribution of rare variants in PRSs to predict disease remains unknown. Here, we examine whether augmenting the standard common variant PRS (PRS) with a rare variant PRS (PRS) improves prediction of obesity. We used genome-wide genotyped and imputed data on 451,145 European-ancestry participants of the UK Biobank, as well as whole exome sequencing (WES) data on 184,385 participants. We performed single variant analyses (for both common and rare variants) and gene-based analyses (for rare variants) for association with BMI (kg/m), obesity (BMI >= 30 kg/m), and extreme obesity (BMI >= 40 kg/m). We built PRSs and PRSs using a range of methods (Clumping+Thresholding [C+T], PRS-CS, lassosum, gene-burden test). We selected the best-performing PRSs and assessed their performance in 36,757 European-ancestry unrelated participants with whole genome sequencing (WGS) data from the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program. The best-performing PRS explained 10.1\% of variation in BMI, and 18.3\% and 22.5\% of the susceptibility to obesity and extreme obesity, respectively, whereas the best-performing PRS explained 1.49\%, and 2.97\% and 3.68\%, respectively. The PRS was associated with an increased risk of obesity and extreme obesity (OR = 1.37 per SD, = 1.7x10; OR = 1.55 per SD, = 3.8x10), which was attenuated, after adjusting for PRS (OR = 1.08 per SD, = 9.8x10; OR= 1.09 per SD, = 0.02). When PRS and PRS are combined, the increase in explained variance attributed to PRS was small (incremental Nagelkerke R = 0.24\% for obesity and 0.51\% for extreme obesity). Consistently, combining PRS to PRS provided little improvement to the prediction of obesity (PRS AUC = 0.591; PRS AUC = 0.708; PRS AUC = 0.710). In summary, while rare variants show convincing association with BMI, obesity and extreme obesity, the PRS provides limited improvement over PRS in the prediction of obesity risk, based on these large populations.

}, keywords = {Gene Frequency, Genetic Variation, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Obesity, Whole Genome Sequencing}, issn = {1664-2392}, doi = {10.3389/fendo.2022.863893}, author = {Wang, Zhe and Choi, Shing Wan and Chami, Nathalie and Boerwinkle, Eric and Fornage, Myriam and Redline, Susan and Bis, Joshua C and Brody, Jennifer A and Psaty, Bruce M and Kim, Wonji and McDonald, Merry-Lynn N and Regan, Elizabeth A and Silverman, Edwin K and Liu, Ching-Ti and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Kalyani, Rita R and Mathias, Rasika A and Yanek, Lisa R and Arnett, Donna K and Justice, Anne E and North, Kari E and Kaplan, Robert and Heckbert, Susan R and de Andrade, Mariza and Guo, Xiuqing and Lange, Leslie A and Rich, Stephen S and Rotter, Jerome I and Ellinor, Patrick T and Lubitz, Steven A and Blangero, John and Shoemaker, M Benjamin and Darbar, Dawood and Gladwin, Mark T and Albert, Christine M and Chasman, Daniel I and Jackson, Rebecca D and Kooperberg, Charles and Reiner, Alexander P and O{\textquoteright}Reilly, Paul F and Loos, Ruth J F} } @article {9158, title = {Whole genome sequence association analysis of fasting glucose and fasting insulin levels in diverse cohorts from the NHLBI TOPMed program.}, journal = {Commun Biol}, volume = {5}, year = {2022}, month = {2022 07 28}, pages = {756}, abstract = {

The genetic determinants of fasting glucose (FG) and fasting insulin (FI) have been studied mostly through genome arrays, resulting in over 100 associated variants. We extended this work with high-coverage whole genome sequencing analyses from fifteen cohorts in NHLBI{\textquoteright}s Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program. Over 23,000 non-diabetic individuals from five race-ethnicities/populations (African, Asian, European, Hispanic and Samoan) were included. Eight variants were significantly associated with FG or FI across previously identified regions MTNR1B, G6PC2, GCK, GCKR and FOXA2. We additionally characterize suggestive associations with FG or FI near previously identified SLC30A8, TCF7L2, and ADCY5 regions as well as APOB, PTPRT, and ROBO1. Functional annotation resources including the Diabetes Epigenome Atlas were compiled for each signal (chromatin states, annotation principal components, and others) to elucidate variant-to-function hypotheses. We provide a catalog of nucleotide-resolution genomic variation spanning intergenic and intronic regions creating a foundation for future sequencing-based investigations of glycemic traits.

}, keywords = {Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Fasting, Glucose, Humans, Insulin, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (U.S.), Nerve Tissue Proteins, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Precision Medicine, Receptors, Immunologic, United States}, issn = {2399-3642}, doi = {10.1038/s42003-022-03702-4}, author = {DiCorpo, Daniel and Gaynor, Sheila M and Russell, Emily M and Westerman, Kenneth E and Raffield, Laura M and Majarian, Timothy D and Wu, Peitao and Sarnowski, Chloe and Highland, Heather M and Jackson, Anne and Hasbani, Natalie R and de Vries, Paul S and Brody, Jennifer A and Hidalgo, Bertha and Guo, Xiuqing and Perry, James A and O{\textquoteright}Connell, Jeffrey R and Lent, Samantha and Montasser, May E and Cade, Brian E and Jain, Deepti and Wang, Heming and D{\textquoteright}Oliveira Albanus, Ricardo and Varshney, Arushi and Yanek, Lisa R and Lange, Leslie and Palmer, Nicholette D and Almeida, Marcio and Peralta, Juan M and Aslibekyan, Stella and Baldridge, Abigail S and Bertoni, Alain G and Bielak, Lawrence F and Chen, Chung-Shiuan and Chen, Yii-Der Ida and Choi, Won Jung and Goodarzi, Mark O and Floyd, James S and Irvin, Marguerite R and Kalyani, Rita R and Kelly, Tanika N and Lee, Seonwook and Liu, Ching-Ti and Loesch, Douglas and Manson, JoAnn E and Minster, Ryan L and Naseri, Take and Pankow, James S and Rasmussen-Torvik, Laura J and Reiner, Alexander P and Reupena, Muagututi{\textquoteright}a Sefuiva and Selvin, Elizabeth and Smith, Jennifer A and Weeks, Daniel E and Xu, Huichun and Yao, Jie and Zhao, Wei and Parker, Stephen and Alonso, Alvaro and Arnett, Donna K and Blangero, John and Boerwinkle, Eric and Correa, Adolfo and Cupples, L Adrienne and Curran, Joanne E and Duggirala, Ravindranath and He, Jiang and Heckbert, Susan R and Kardia, Sharon L R and Kim, Ryan W and Kooperberg, Charles and Liu, Simin and Mathias, Rasika A and McGarvey, Stephen T and Mitchell, Braxton D and Morrison, Alanna C and Peyser, Patricia A and Psaty, Bruce M and Redline, Susan and Shuldiner, Alan R and Taylor, Kent D and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Viaud-Martinez, Karine A and Florez, Jose C and Wilson, James G and Sladek, Robert and Rich, Stephen S and Rotter, Jerome I and Lin, Xihong and Dupuis, Jos{\'e}e and Meigs, James B and Wessel, Jennifer and Manning, Alisa K} } @article {9387, title = {Aberrant activation of TCL1A promotes stem cell expansion in clonal haematopoiesis.}, journal = {Nature}, volume = {616}, year = {2023}, month = {2023 Apr}, pages = {755-763}, abstract = {

Mutations in a diverse set of driver genes increase the fitness of haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs), leading to clonal haematopoiesis. These lesions are precursors for blood cancers, but the basis of their fitness advantage remains largely unknown, partly owing to a paucity of large cohorts in which the clonal expansion rate has been assessed by longitudinal sampling. Here, to circumvent this limitation, we developed a method to infer the expansion rate from data from a single time point. We applied this method to 5,071 people with clonal haematopoiesis. A genome-wide association study revealed that a common inherited polymorphism in the TCL1A promoter was associated with a slower expansion rate in clonal haematopoiesis overall, but the effect varied by driver gene. Those carrying this protective allele exhibited markedly reduced growth rates or prevalence of clones with driver mutations in TET2, ASXL1, SF3B1 and SRSF2, but~this effect was not seen in~clones with~driver mutations in DNMT3A. TCL1A was not expressed in normal or DNMT3A-mutated HSCs, but the introduction of mutations in TET2 or ASXL1 led to the expression of TCL1A protein and the expansion of HSCs in vitro. The protective allele restricted TCL1A expression and expansion of mutant HSCs, as did experimental~knockdown of TCL1A expression. Forced expression of TCL1A promoted the expansion of human HSCs in vitro and mouse HSCs in vivo. Our results indicate that the fitness advantage of several commonly mutated driver genes in clonal haematopoiesis may be mediated by TCL1A activation.

}, keywords = {Alleles, Animals, Clonal Hematopoiesis, Genome-Wide Association Study, Hematopoiesis, Hematopoietic Stem Cells, Humans, Mice, Mutation, Promoter Regions, Genetic}, issn = {1476-4687}, doi = {10.1038/s41586-023-05806-1}, author = {Weinstock, Joshua S and Gopakumar, Jayakrishnan and Burugula, Bala Bharathi and Uddin, Md Mesbah and Jahn, Nikolaus and Belk, Julia A and Bouzid, Hind and Daniel, Bence and Miao, Zhuang and Ly, Nghi and Mack, Taralynn M and Luna, Sofia E and Prothro, Katherine P and Mitchell, Shaneice R and Laurie, Cecelia A and Broome, Jai G and Taylor, Kent D and Guo, Xiuqing and Sinner, Moritz F and von Falkenhausen, Aenne S and K{\"a}{\"a}b, Stefan and Shuldiner, Alan R and O{\textquoteright}Connell, Jeffrey R and Lewis, Joshua P and Boerwinkle, Eric and Barnes, Kathleen C and Chami, Nathalie and Kenny, Eimear E and Loos, Ruth J F and Fornage, Myriam and Hou, Lifang and Lloyd-Jones, Donald M and Redline, Susan and Cade, Brian E and Psaty, Bruce M and Bis, Joshua C and Brody, Jennifer A and Silverman, Edwin K and Yun, Jeong H and Qiao, Dandi and Palmer, Nicholette D and Freedman, Barry I and Bowden, Donald W and Cho, Michael H and DeMeo, Dawn L and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Yanek, Lisa R and Becker, Lewis C and Kardia, Sharon L R and Peyser, Patricia A and He, Jiang and Rienstra, Michiel and van der Harst, Pim and Kaplan, Robert and Heckbert, Susan R and Smith, Nicholas L and Wiggins, Kerri L and Arnett, Donna K and Irvin, Marguerite R and Tiwari, Hemant and Cutler, Michael J and Knight, Stacey and Muhlestein, J Brent and Correa, Adolfo and Raffield, Laura M and Gao, Yan and de Andrade, Mariza and Rotter, Jerome I and Rich, Stephen S and Tracy, Russell P and Konkle, Barbara A and Johnsen, Jill M and Wheeler, Marsha M and Smith, J Gustav and Melander, Olle and Nilsson, Peter M and Custer, Brian S and Duggirala, Ravindranath and Curran, Joanne E and Blangero, John and McGarvey, Stephen and Williams, L Keoki and Xiao, Shujie and Yang, Mao and Gu, C Charles and Chen, Yii-Der Ida and Lee, Wen-Jane and Marcus, Gregory M and Kane, John P and Pullinger, Clive R and Shoemaker, M Benjamin and Darbar, Dawood and Roden, Dan M and Albert, Christine and Kooperberg, Charles and Zhou, Ying and Manson, JoAnn E and Desai, Pinkal and Johnson, Andrew D and Mathias, Rasika A and Blackwell, Thomas W and Abecasis, Goncalo R and Smith, Albert V and Kang, Hyun M and Satpathy, Ansuman T and Natarajan, Pradeep and Kitzman, Jacob O and Whitsel, Eric A and Reiner, Alexander P and Bick, Alexander G and Jaiswal, Siddhartha} } @article {9322, title = {Genetic architecture of spatial electrical biomarkers for cardiac arrhythmia and relationship with cardiovascular disease.}, journal = {Nat Commun}, volume = {14}, year = {2023}, month = {2023 Mar 14}, pages = {1411}, abstract = {

The 3-dimensional spatial and 2-dimensional frontal QRS-T angles are measures derived from the vectorcardiogram. They are independent risk predictors for arrhythmia, but the underlying biology is unknown. Using multi-ancestry genome-wide association studies we identify 61 (58 previously unreported) loci for the spatial QRS-T angle (N = 118,780) and 11 for the frontal QRS-T angle (N = 159,715). Seven out of the 61 spatial QRS-T angle loci have not been reported for other electrocardiographic measures. Enrichments are observed in pathways related to cardiac and vascular development, muscle contraction, and hypertrophy. Pairwise genome-wide association studies with classical ECG traits identify shared genetic influences with PR interval and QRS duration.~Phenome-wide scanning indicate associations with atrial fibrillation, atrioventricular block and arterial embolism~and~genetically determined QRS-T angle measures are associated with fascicular and bundle branch block (and also atrioventricular block for the frontal QRS-T angle). We identify potential biology involved in the QRS-T angle~and~their genetic relationships with cardiovascular traits and diseases, may inform future research and risk prediction.

}, keywords = {Arrhythmias, Cardiac, Atrioventricular Block, Biomarkers, Cardiovascular Diseases, Electrocardiography, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Risk Factors}, issn = {2041-1723}, doi = {10.1038/s41467-023-36997-w}, author = {Young, William J and Haessler, Jeffrey and Benjamins, Jan-Walter and Repetto, Linda and Yao, Jie and Isaacs, Aaron and Harper, Andrew R and Ramirez, Julia and Garnier, Sophie and Van Duijvenboden, Stefan and Baldassari, Antoine R and Concas, Maria Pina and Duong, ThuyVy and Foco, Luisa and Isaksen, Jonas L and Mei, Hao and Noordam, Raymond and Nursyifa, Casia and Richmond, Anne and Santolalla, Meddly L and Sitlani, Colleen M and Soroush, Negin and Th{\'e}riault, S{\'e}bastien and Trompet, Stella and Aeschbacher, Stefanie and Ahmadizar, Fariba and Alonso, Alvaro and Brody, Jennifer A and Campbell, Archie and Correa, Adolfo and Darbar, Dawood and De Luca, Antonio and Deleuze, Jean-Francois and Ellervik, Christina and Fuchsberger, Christian and Goel, Anuj and Grace, Christopher and Guo, Xiuqing and Hansen, Torben and Heckbert, Susan R and Jackson, Rebecca D and Kors, Jan A and Lima-Costa, Maria Fernanda and Linneberg, Allan and Macfarlane, Peter W and Morrison, Alanna C and Navarro, Pau and Porteous, David J and Pramstaller, Peter P and Reiner, Alexander P and Risch, Lorenz and Schotten, Ulrich and Shen, Xia and Sinagra, Gianfranco and Soliman, Elsayed Z and Stoll, Monika and Tarazona-Santos, Eduardo and Tinker, Andrew and Trajanoska, Katerina and Villard, Eric and Warren, Helen R and Whitsel, Eric A and Wiggins, Kerri L and Arking, Dan E and Avery, Christy L and Conen, David and Girotto, Giorgia and Grarup, Niels and Hayward, Caroline and Jukema, J Wouter and Mook-Kanamori, Dennis O and Olesen, Morten Salling and Padmanabhan, Sandosh and Psaty, Bruce M and Pattaro, Cristian and Ribeiro, Antonio Luiz P and Rotter, Jerome I and Stricker, Bruno H and van der Harst, Pim and van Duijn, Cornelia M and Verweij, Niek and Wilson, James G and Orini, Michele and Charron, Philippe and Watkins, Hugh and Kooperberg, Charles and Lin, Henry J and Wilson, James F and Kanters, J{\o}rgen K and Sotoodehnia, Nona and Mifsud, Borbala and Lambiase, Pier D and Tereshchenko, Larisa G and Munroe, Patricia B} } @article {9419, title = {The genetic determinants of recurrent somatic mutations in 43,693 blood genomes.}, journal = {Sci Adv}, volume = {9}, year = {2023}, month = {2023 Apr 28}, pages = {eabm4945}, abstract = {

Nononcogenic somatic mutations are thought to be uncommon and inconsequential. To test this, we analyzed 43,693 National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine blood whole genomes from 37 cohorts and identified 7131 non-missense somatic mutations that are recurrently mutated in at least 50 individuals. These recurrent non-missense somatic mutations (RNMSMs) are not clearly explained by other clonal phenomena such as clonal hematopoiesis. RNMSM prevalence increased with age, with an average 50-year-old having 27 RNMSMs. Inherited germline variation associated with RNMSM acquisition. These variants were found in genes involved in adaptive immune function, proinflammatory cytokine production, and lymphoid lineage commitment. In addition, the presence of eight specific RNMSMs associated with blood cell traits at effect sizes comparable to Mendelian genetic mutations. Overall, we found that somatic mutations in blood are an unexpectedly common phenomenon with ancestry-specific determinants and human health consequences.

}, keywords = {Germ-Line Mutation, Hematopoiesis, Humans, Middle Aged, Mutation, Mutation, Missense, Phenotype}, issn = {2375-2548}, doi = {10.1126/sciadv.abm4945}, author = {Weinstock, Joshua S and Laurie, Cecelia A and Broome, Jai G and Taylor, Kent D and Guo, Xiuqing and Shuldiner, Alan R and O{\textquoteright}Connell, Jeffrey R and Lewis, Joshua P and Boerwinkle, Eric and Barnes, Kathleen C and Chami, Nathalie and Kenny, Eimear E and Loos, Ruth J F and Fornage, Myriam and Redline, Susan and Cade, Brian E and Gilliland, Frank D and Chen, Zhanghua and Gauderman, W James and Kumar, Rajesh and Grammer, Leslie and Schleimer, Robert P and Psaty, Bruce M and Bis, Joshua C and Brody, Jennifer A and Silverman, Edwin K and Yun, Jeong H and Qiao, Dandi and Weiss, Scott T and Lasky-Su, Jessica and DeMeo, Dawn L and Palmer, Nicholette D and Freedman, Barry I and Bowden, Donald W and Cho, Michael H and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Johnson, Andrew D and Yanek, Lisa R and Becker, Lewis C and Kardia, Sharon and He, Jiang and Kaplan, Robert and Heckbert, Susan R and Smith, Nicholas L and Wiggins, Kerri L and Arnett, Donna K and Irvin, Marguerite R and Tiwari, Hemant and Correa, Adolfo and Raffield, Laura M and Gao, Yan and de Andrade, Mariza and Rotter, Jerome I and Rich, Stephen S and Manichaikul, Ani W and Konkle, Barbara A and Johnsen, Jill M and Wheeler, Marsha M and Custer, Brian S and Duggirala, Ravindranath and Curran, Joanne E and Blangero, John and Gui, Hongsheng and Xiao, Shujie and Williams, L Keoki and Meyers, Deborah A and Li, Xingnan and Ortega, Victor and McGarvey, Stephen and Gu, C Charles and Chen, Yii-Der Ida and Lee, Wen-Jane and Shoemaker, M Benjamin and Darbar, Dawood and Roden, Dan and Albert, Christine and Kooperberg, Charles and Desai, Pinkal and Blackwell, Thomas W and Abecasis, Goncalo R and Smith, Albert V and Kang, Hyun M and Mathias, Rasika and Natarajan, Pradeep and Jaiswal, Siddhartha and Reiner, Alexander P 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 {9702, title = {Machine learning models for predicting blood pressure phenotypes by combining multiple polygenic risk scores.}, journal = {Sci Rep}, volume = {14}, year = {2024}, month = {2024 May 30}, pages = {12436}, abstract = {

We construct non-linear machine learning (ML) prediction models for systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP, DBP) using demographic and clinical variables and polygenic risk scores (PRSs). We developed a two-model ensemble, consisting of a baseline model, where prediction is based on demographic and clinical variables only, and a genetic model, where we also include PRSs. We evaluate the use of a linear versus a non-linear model at both the baseline and the genetic model levels and assess the improvement in performance when incorporating multiple PRSs. We report the ensemble model{\textquoteright}s performance as percentage variance explained (PVE) on a held-out test dataset. A non-linear baseline model improved the PVEs from 28.1 to 30.1\% (SBP) and 14.3\% to 17.4\% (DBP) compared with a linear baseline model. Including seven PRSs in the genetic model computed based on the largest available GWAS of SBP/DBP improved the genetic model PVE from 4.8 to 5.1\% (SBP) and 4.7 to 5\% (DBP) compared to using a single PRS. Adding additional 14 PRSs computed based on two independent GWASs further increased the genetic model PVE to 6.3\% (SBP) and 5.7\% (DBP). PVE differed across self-reported race/ethnicity groups, with primarily all non-White groups benefitting from the inclusion of additional PRSs. In summary, non-linear ML models improves BP prediction in models incorporating diverse populations.

}, keywords = {Blood Pressure, Female, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genetic Risk Score, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Hypertension, Machine Learning, Male, Middle Aged, Models, Genetic, Multifactorial Inheritance, Phenotype, Risk Factors}, issn = {2045-2322}, doi = {10.1038/s41598-024-62945-9}, author = {Hrytsenko, Yana and Shea, Benjamin and Elgart, Michael and Kurniansyah, Nuzulul and Lyons, Genevieve and Morrison, Alanna C and Carson, April P and Haring, Bernhard and Mitchell, Braxton D and Psaty, Bruce M and Jaeger, Byron C and Gu, C Charles and Kooperberg, Charles and Levy, Daniel and Lloyd-Jones, Donald and Choi, Eunhee and Brody, Jennifer A and Smith, Jennifer A and Rotter, Jerome I and Moll, Matthew and Fornage, Myriam and Simon, Noah and Castaldi, Peter and Casanova, Ramon and Chung, Ren-Hua and Kaplan, Robert and Loos, Ruth J F and Kardia, Sharon L R and Rich, Stephen S and Redline, Susan and Kelly, Tanika and O{\textquoteright}Connor, Timothy and Zhao, Wei and Kim, Wonji and Guo, Xiuqing and Ida Chen, Yii-Der and Sofer, Tamar} } @article {9646, title = {Methylation patterns associated with C-reactive protein in racially and ethnically diverse populations.}, journal = {Epigenetics}, volume = {19}, year = {2024}, month = {2024 Dec}, pages = {2333668}, abstract = {

Systemic low-grade inflammation is a feature of chronic disease. C-reactive protein (CRP) is a common biomarker of inflammation and used as an indicator of disease risk; however, the role of inflammation in disease is not completely understood. Methylation is an epigenetic modification in the DNA which plays a pivotal role in gene expression. In this study we evaluated differential DNA methylation patterns associated with blood CRP level to elucidate biological pathways and genetic regulatory mechanisms to improve the understanding of chronic inflammation. The racially and ethnically diverse participants in this study were included as 50\% White, 41\% Black or African American, 7\% Hispanic or Latino/a, and 2\% Native Hawaiian, Asian American, American Indian, or Alaska Native (total = 13,433) individuals. We replicated 113 CpG sites from 87 unique loci, of which five were novel (, , and cg03282312), across a discovery set of 1,150 CpG sites associated with CRP level ( < 1.2E-7). The downstream pathways affected by DNA methylation included the identification of and CpG-gene transcript pairs which contributed to the innate immune response gene enrichment pathway along with , , and . Gene enrichment analysis also identified the nuclear factor-kappaB transcription pathway. Using two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) we inferred methylation at three CpG sites as causal for CRP levels using both White and Black or African American MR instrument variables. Overall, we identified novel CpG sites and gene transcripts that could be valuable in understanding the specific cellular processes and pathogenic mechanisms involved in inflammation.

}, keywords = {C-Reactive Protein, CpG Islands, DNA, DNA Methylation, Epigenesis, Genetic, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Inflammation, Intracellular Signaling Peptides and Proteins}, issn = {1559-2308}, doi = {10.1080/15592294.2024.2333668}, author = {Lundin, Jessica I and Peters, Ulrike and Hu, Yao and Ammous, Farah and Avery, Christy L and Benjamin, Emelia J and Bis, Joshua C and Brody, Jennifer A and Carlson, Chris and Cushman, Mary and Gignoux, Chris and Guo, Xiuqing and Haessler, Jeff and Haiman, Chris and Joehanes, Roby and Kasela, Silva and Kenny, Eimear and Lapalainien, Tuuli and Levy, Daniel and Liu, Chunyu and Liu, Yongmei and Loos, Ruth J F and Lu, Ake and Matise, Tara and North, Kari E and Park, Sungshim L and Ratliff, Scott M and Reiner, Alex and Rich, Stephen S and Rotter, Jerome I and Smith, Jennifer A and Sotoodehnia, Nona and Tracy, Russell and Van den Berg, David and Xu, Huichun and Ye, Ting and Zhao, Wei and Raffield, Laura M and Kooperberg, Charles} } @article {9911, title = {Methylome-wide association analyses of lipids and modifying effects of behavioral factors in diverse race and ethnicity participants.}, journal = {Clin Epigenetics}, volume = {17}, year = {2025}, month = {2025 Apr 02}, pages = {54}, abstract = {

Circulating lipid concentrations are clinically associated with cardiometabolic diseases. The phenotypic variance explained by identified genetic variants remains limited, highlighting the importance of searching for additional factors beyond genetic sequence variants. DNA methylation has been linked to lipid concentrations in previous studies, although most of the studies harbored moderate sample sizes and exhibited underrepresentation of non-European ancestry populations. In addition, knowledge of nongenetic factors on lipid profiles is extremely limited. In the Population Architecture Using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) Study, we performed methylome-wide association analysis on 9,561 participants from diverse race and ethnicity backgrounds for HDL-c, LDL-c, TC, and TG levels, and also tested interactions between smoking or alcohol intake and methylation in their association with lipid levels. We identified novel CpG sites at 16 loci (P < 1.18E-7) with successful replication on 3,215 participants. One additional novel locus was identified in the self-reported White participants (P = 4.66E-8). Although no additional CpG sites were identified in the genome-wide interaction analysis, 13 reported CpG sites showed significant heterogeneous association across smoking or alcohol intake strata. By mapping novel and reported CpG sites to genes, we identified enriched pathways directly linked to lipid metabolism as well as ones spanning various biological functions. These findings provide new insights into the regulation of lipid concentrations.

}, keywords = {Adult, Aged, Alcohol Drinking, CpG Islands, DNA Methylation, Ethnicity, Female, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Lipids, Male, Middle Aged, Racial Groups, Smoking, White People}, issn = {1868-7083}, doi = {10.1186/s13148-025-01859-3}, author = {Hu, Yao and Haessler, Jeff and Lundin, Jessica I and Darst, Burcu F and Whitsel, Eric A and Grove, Megan and Guan, Weihua and Xia, Rui and Szeto, Mindy and Raffield, Laura M and Ratliff, Scott and Wang, Yuxuan and Wang, Xuzhi and Fohner, Alison E and Lynch, Megan T and Patel, Yesha M and Lani Park, S and Xu, Huichun and Mitchell, Braxton D and Bis, Joshua C and Sotoodehnia, Nona and Brody, Jennifer A and Psaty, Bruce M and Peloso, Gina M and Tsai, Michael Y and Rich, Stephen S and Rotter, Jerome I and Smith, Jennifer A and Kardia, Sharon L R and Reiner, Alex P and Lange, Leslie and Fornage, Myriam and Pankow, James S and Graff, Mariaelisa and North, Kari E and Kooperberg, Charles and Peters, Ulrike} } @article {9907, title = {Sequencing in over 50,000 cases identifies coding and structural variation underlying atrial fibrillation risk.}, journal = {Nat Genet}, volume = {57}, year = {2025}, month = {2025 Mar}, pages = {548-562}, abstract = {

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a prevalent and morbid abnormality of the heart rhythm with a strong genetic component. Here, we meta-analyzed genome and exome sequencing data from 36 studies that included 52,416 AF cases and 277,762 controls. In burden tests of rare coding variation, we identified novel associations between AF and the genes MYBPC3, LMNA, PKP2, FAM189A2 and KDM5B. We further identified associations between AF and rare structural variants owing to deletions in CTNNA3 and duplications of GATA4. We broadly replicated our findings in independent samples from MyCode, deCODE and UK Biobank. Finally, we found that CRISPR knockout of KDM5B in stem-cell-derived atrial cardiomyocytes led to a shortening of the action potential duration and widespread transcriptomic dysregulation of genes relevant to atrial homeostasis and conduction. Our results highlight the contribution of rare coding and structural variants to AF, including genetic links between AF and cardiomyopathies, and expand our understanding of the rare variant architecture for this common arrhythmia.

}, keywords = {Atrial Fibrillation, Case-Control Studies, Exome Sequencing, Genetic Predisposition to Disease, Genetic Variation, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Myocytes, Cardiac, Risk Factors}, issn = {1546-1718}, doi = {10.1038/s41588-025-02074-9}, author = {Choi, Seung Hoan and Jurgens, Sean J and Xiao, Ling and Hill, Matthew C and Haggerty, Christopher M and Sveinbj{\"o}rnsson, Gar{\dh}ar and Morrill, Valerie N and Marston, Nicholas A and Weng, Lu-Chen and Pirruccello, James P and Arnar, David O and Gudbjartsson, Daniel Fannar and Mantineo, Helene and von Falkenhausen, Aenne S and Natale, Andrea and Tveit, Arnljot and Geelhoed, Bastiaan and Roselli, Carolina and Van Wagoner, David R and Darbar, Dawood and Haase, Doreen and Soliman, Elsayed Z and Davogustto, Giovanni E and Jun, Goo and Calkins, Hugh and Anderson, Jeffrey L and Brody, Jennifer A and Halford, Jennifer L and Barnard, John and Hokanson, John E and Smith, Jonathan D and Bis, Joshua C and Young, Kendra and Johnson, Linda S B and Risch, Lorenz and Gula, Lorne J and Kwee, Lydia Coulter and Chaffin, Mark D and K{\"u}hne, Michael and Preuss, Michael and Gupta, Namrata and Nafissi, Navid A and Smith, Nicholas L and Nilsson, Peter M and van der Harst, Pim and Wells, Quinn S and Judy, Renae L and Schnabel, Renate B and Johnson, Renee and Smit, Roelof A J and Gabriel, Stacey and Knight, Stacey and Furukawa, Tetsushi and Blackwell, Thomas W and Nauffal, Victor and Wang, Xin and Min, Yuan-I and Yoneda, Zachary T and Laksman, Zachary W M and Bezzina, Connie R and Alonso, Alvaro and Psaty, Bruce M and Albert, Christine M and Arking, Dan E and Roden, Dan M and Chasman, Daniel I and Rader, Daniel J and Conen, David and McManus, David D and Fatkin, Diane and Benjamin, Emelia J and Boerwinkle, Eric and Marcus, Gregory M and Christophersen, Ingrid E and Smith, J Gustav and Roberts, Jason D and Raffield, Laura M and Shoemaker, M Benjamin and Cho, Michael H and Cutler, Michael J and Rienstra, Michiel and Chung, Mina K and S Olesen, Morten and Sinner, Moritz F and Sotoodehnia, Nona and Kirchhof, Paulus and Loos, Ruth J F and Nazarian, Saman and Mohanty, Sanghamitra and Damrauer, Scott M and K{\"a}{\"a}b, Stefan and Heckbert, Susan R and Redline, Susan and Shah, Svati H and Tanaka, Toshihiro and Ebana, Yusuke and Holm, Hilma and Stefansson, Kari and Ruff, Christian T and Sabatine, Marc S and Lunetta, Kathryn L and Lubitz, Steven A and Ellinor, Patrick T} } @article {9899, title = {A statistical framework for multi-trait rare variant analysis in large-scale whole-genome sequencing studies.}, journal = {Nat Comput Sci}, volume = {5}, year = {2025}, month = {2025 Feb}, pages = {125-143}, abstract = {

Large-scale whole-genome sequencing (WGS) studies have improved our understanding of the contributions of coding and noncoding rare variants to complex human traits. Leveraging association effect sizes across multiple traits in WGS rare variant association analysis can improve statistical power over single-trait analysis, and also detect pleiotropic genes and regions. Existing multi-trait methods have limited ability to perform rare variant analysis of large-scale WGS data. We propose MultiSTAAR, a statistical framework and computationally scalable analytical pipeline for functionally informed multi-trait rare variant analysis in large-scale WGS studies. MultiSTAAR accounts for relatedness, population structure and correlation among phenotypes by jointly analyzing multiple traits, and further empowers rare variant association analysis by incorporating multiple functional annotations. We applied MultiSTAAR to jointly analyze three lipid traits in 61,838 multi-ethnic samples from the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Program. We discovered and replicated new associations with lipid traits missed by single-trait analysis.

}, keywords = {Genetic Variation, Genome, Human, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Lipids, Phenotype, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Quantitative Trait Loci, Whole Genome Sequencing}, issn = {2662-8457}, doi = {10.1038/s43588-024-00764-8}, author = {Li, Xihao and Chen, Han and Selvaraj, Margaret Sunitha and Van Buren, Eric and Zhou, Hufeng and Wang, Yuxuan and Sun, Ryan and McCaw, Zachary R and Yu, Zhi and Jiang, Min-Zhi and DiCorpo, Daniel and Gaynor, Sheila M and Dey, Rounak and Arnett, Donna K and Benjamin, Emelia J and Bis, Joshua C and Blangero, John and Boerwinkle, Eric and Bowden, Donald W and Brody, Jennifer A and Cade, Brian E and Carson, April P and Carlson, Jenna C and Chami, Nathalie and Chen, Yii-Der Ida and Curran, Joanne E and de Vries, Paul S and Fornage, Myriam and Franceschini, Nora and Freedman, Barry I and Gu, Charles and Heard-Costa, Nancy L and He, Jiang and Hou, Lifang and Hung, Yi-Jen and Irvin, Marguerite R and Kaplan, Robert C and Kardia, Sharon L R and Kelly, Tanika N and Konigsberg, Iain and Kooperberg, Charles and Kral, Brian G and Li, Changwei and Li, Yun and Lin, Honghuang and Liu, Ching-Ti and Loos, Ruth J F and Mahaney, Michael C and Martin, Lisa W and Mathias, Rasika A and Mitchell, Braxton D and Montasser, May E and Morrison, Alanna C and Naseri, Take and North, Kari E and Palmer, Nicholette D and Peyser, Patricia A and Psaty, Bruce M and Redline, Susan and Reiner, Alexander P and Rich, Stephen S and Sitlani, Colleen M and Smith, Jennifer A and Taylor, Kent D and Tiwari, Hemant K and Vasan, Ramachandran S and Viali, Satupa{\textquoteright}itea and Wang, Zhe and Wessel, Jennifer and Yanek, Lisa R and Yu, Bing and Dupuis, Jos{\'e}e and Meigs, James B and Auer, Paul L and Raffield, Laura M and Manning, Alisa K and Rice, Kenneth M and Rotter, Jerome I and Peloso, Gina M and Natarajan, Pradeep and Li, Zilin and Liu, Zhonghua and Lin, Xihong} }