@article {1153, title = {Association of novel genetic Loci with circulating fibrinogen levels: a genome-wide association study in 6 population-based cohorts.}, journal = {Circ Cardiovasc Genet}, volume = {2}, year = {2009}, month = {2009 Apr}, pages = {125-33}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND: Fibrinogen is both central to blood coagulation and an acute-phase reactant. We aimed to identify common variants influencing circulation fibrinogen levels.

METHODS AND RESULTS: We conducted a genome-wide association analysis on 6 population-based studies, the Rotterdam Study, the Framingham Heart Study, the Cardiovascular Health Study, the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, the Monitoring of Trends and Determinants in Cardiovascular Disease/KORA Augsburg Study, and the British 1958 Birth Cohort Study, including 22 096 participants of European ancestry. Four loci were marked by 1 or more single-nucleotide polymorphisms that demonstrated genome-wide significance (P<5.0 x 10(-8)). These included a single-nucleotide polymorphism located in the fibrinogen beta chain (FGB) gene and 3 single-nucleotide polymorphisms representing newly identified loci. The high-signal single-nucleotide polymorphisms were rs1800789 in exon 7 of FGB (P=1.8 x 10(-30)), rs2522056 downstream from the interferon regulatory factor 1 (IRF1) gene (P=1.3 x 10(-15)), rs511154 within intron 1 of the propionyl coenzyme A carboxylase (PCCB) gene (P=5.9 x 10(-10)), and rs1539019 on the NLR family pyrin domain containing 3 isoforms (NLRP3) gene (P=1.04 x 10(-8)).

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings highlight biological pathways that may be important in regulation of inflammation underlying cardiovascular disease.

}, keywords = {Adult, Aged, Aged, 80 and over, Cardiovascular Diseases, Cohort Studies, European Continental Ancestry Group, Female, Fibrinogen, Genetic Loci, Genome-Wide Association Study, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Pedigree, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Young Adult}, issn = {1942-3268}, doi = {10.1161/CIRCGENETICS.108.825224}, author = {Dehghan, Abbas and Yang, Qiong and Peters, Annette and Basu, Saonli and Bis, Joshua C and Rudnicka, Alicja R and Kavousi, Maryam and Chen, Ming-Huei and Baumert, Jens and Lowe, Gordon D O and McKnight, Barbara and Tang, Weihong and de Maat, Moniek and Larson, Martin G and Eyhermendy, Susana and McArdle, Wendy L and Lumley, Thomas and Pankow, James S and Hofman, Albert and Massaro, Joseph M and Rivadeneira, Fernando and Kolz, Melanie and Taylor, Kent D and van Duijn, Cornelia M and Kathiresan, Sekar and Illig, Thomas and Aulchenko, Yurii S and Volcik, Kelly A and Johnson, Andrew D and Uitterlinden, Andr{\'e} G and Tofler, Geoffrey H and Gieger, Christian and Psaty, Bruce M and Couper, David J and Boerwinkle, Eric and Koenig, Wolfgang and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Christopher J and Witteman, Jacqueline C and Strachan, David P and Smith, Nicholas L and Folsom, Aaron R} } @article {1544, title = {Ultraconserved elements in the human genome: association and transmission analyses of highly constrained single-nucleotide polymorphisms.}, journal = {Genetics}, volume = {192}, year = {2012}, month = {2012 Sep}, pages = {253-66}, abstract = {

Ultraconserved elements in the human genome likely harbor important biological functions as they are dosage sensitive and are able to direct tissue-specific expression. Because they are under purifying selection, variants in these elements may have a lower frequency in the population but a higher likelihood of association with complex traits. We tested a set of highly constrained SNPs (hcSNPs) distributed genome-wide among ultraconserved and nearly ultraconserved elements for association with seven traits related to reproductive (age at natural menopause, number of children, age at first child, and age at last child) and overall [longevity, body mass index (BMI), and height] fitness. Using up to 24,047 European-American samples from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Candidate Gene Association Resource (CARe), we observed an excess of associations with BMI and height. In an independent replication panel the most strongly associated SNPs showed an 8.4-fold enrichment of associations at the nominal level, including three variants in previously identified loci and one in a locus (DENND1A) previously shown to be associated with polycystic ovary syndrome. Finally, using 1430 family trios, we showed that the transmissions from heterozygous parents to offspring of the derived alleles of rare (frequency <= 0.5\%) hcSNPs are not biased, particularly after adjusting for the rates of genotype missingness and error in the data. The lack of transmission bias ruled out an immediately and strongly deleterious effect due to the rare derived alleles, consistent with the observation that mice homozygous for the deletion of ultraconserved elements showed no overt phenotype. Our study also illustrated the importance of carefully modeling potential technical confounders when analyzing genotype data of rare variants.

}, keywords = {Alleles, Animals, Body Height, Body Mass Index, Child, Conserved Sequence, Dogs, Evolution, Molecular, Female, Genetic Fitness, Genetic Variation, Genome, Human, Genotype, Humans, Inheritance Patterns, Male, Mice, Pedigree, Phenotype, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Rats, Reproduction, Young Adult}, issn = {1943-2631}, doi = {10.1534/genetics.112.141945}, author = {Chiang, Charleston W K and Liu, Ching-Ti and Lettre, Guillaume and Lange, Leslie A and Jorgensen, Neal W and Keating, Brendan J and Vedantam, Sailaja and Nock, Nora L and Franceschini, Nora and Reiner, Alex P and Demerath, Ellen W and Boerwinkle, Eric and Rotter, Jerome I and Wilson, James G and North, Kari E and Papanicolaou, George J and Cupples, L Adrienne and Murabito, Joanne M and Hirschhorn, Joel N} } @article {6138, title = {Exome sequencing and genome-wide linkage analysis in 17 families illustrate the complex contribution of TTN truncating variants to dilated cardiomyopathy.}, journal = {Circ Cardiovasc Genet}, volume = {6}, year = {2013}, month = {2013 Apr}, pages = {144-53}, abstract = {

BACKGROUND- Familial dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a genetically heterogeneous disease with >30 known genes. TTN truncating variants were recently implicated in a candidate gene study to cause 25\% of familial and 18\% of sporadic DCM cases. METHODS AND RESULTS- We used an unbiased genome-wide approach using both linkage analysis and variant filtering across the exome sequences of 48 individuals affected with DCM from 17 families to identify genetic cause. Linkage analysis ranked the TTN region as falling under the second highest genome-wide multipoint linkage peak, multipoint logarithm of odds, 1.59. We identified 6 TTN truncating variants carried by individuals affected with DCM in 7 of 17 DCM families (logarithm of odds, 2.99); 2 of these 7 families also had novel missense variants that segregated with disease. Two additional novel truncating TTN variants did not segregate with DCM. Nucleotide diversity at the TTN locus, including missense variants, was comparable with 5 other known DCM genes. The average number of missense variants in the exome sequences from the DCM cases or the ≈5400 cases from the Exome Sequencing Project was ≈23 per individual. The average number of TTN truncating variants in the Exome Sequencing Project was 0.014 per individual. We also identified a region (chr9q21.11-q22.31) with no known DCM genes with a maximum heterogeneity logarithm of odds score of 1.74. CONCLUSIONS- These data suggest that TTN truncating variants contribute to DCM cause. However, the lack of segregation of all identified TTN truncating variants illustrates the challenge of determining variant pathogenicity even with full exome sequencing.

}, keywords = {Adolescent, Adult, Aged, Cardiomyopathy, Dilated, Chromosomes, Human, Pair 9, Connectin, Exome, Female, Genetic Heterogeneity, Genetic Linkage, Genetic Loci, Genome, Human, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Muscle Proteins, Mutation, Missense, Odds Ratio, Pedigree, Protein Kinases, Sequence Analysis, DNA, Young Adult}, issn = {1942-3268}, doi = {10.1161/CIRCGENETICS.111.000062}, author = {Norton, Nadine and Li, Duanxiang and Rampersaud, Evadnie and Morales, Ana and Martin, Eden R and Zuchner, Stephan and Guo, Shengru and Gonzalez, Michael and Hedges, Dale J and Robertson, Peggy D and Krumm, Niklas and Nickerson, Deborah A and Hershberger, Ray E} }