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A statistical framework for powerful multi-trait rare variant analysis in large-scale whole-genome sequencing studies.

TitleA statistical framework for powerful multi-trait rare variant analysis in large-scale whole-genome sequencing studies.
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2023
AuthorsLi, X, Chen, H, Selvaraj, MSunitha, Van Buren, E, Zhou, H, Wang, Y, Sun, R, McCaw, ZR, Yu, Z, Arnett, DK, Bis, JC, Blangero, J, Boerwinkle, E, Bowden, DW, Brody, JA, Cade, BE, Carson, AP, Carlson, JC, Chami, N, Chen, Y-DI, Curran, JE, de Vries, PS, Fornage, M, Franceschini, N, Freedman, BI, Gu, C, Heard-Costa, NL, He, J, Hou, L, Hung, Y-J, Irvin, MR, Kaplan, RC, Kardia, SLR, Kelly, T, Konigsberg, I, Kooperberg, C, Kral, BG, Li, C, Loos, RJF, Mahaney, MC, Martin, LW, Mathias, RA, Minster, RL, Mitchell, BD, Montasser, ME, Morrison, AC, Palmer, ND, Peyser, PA, Psaty, BM, Raffield, LM, Redline, S, Reiner, AP, Rich, SS, Sitlani, CM, Smith, JA, Taylor, KD, Tiwari, H, Vasan, RS, Wang, Z, Yanek, LR, Yu, B, Rice, KM, Rotter, JI, Peloso, GM, Natarajan, P, Li, Z, Liu, Z, Lin, X
Corporate/Institutional AuthorsNHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Consortium
JournalbioRxiv
Date Published2023 Nov 02
Abstract<p>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 (low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglycerides) in 61,861 multi-ethnic samples from the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Program. We discovered new associations with lipid traits missed by single-trait analysis, including rare variants within an enhancer of and an intergenic region on chromosome 1.</p>
DOI10.1101/2023.10.30.564764
Alternate JournalbioRxiv
PubMed ID37961350
PubMed Central IDPMC10634938
ePub date: 
23/11