A framework for detecting noncoding rare variant associations of large-scale whole-genome sequencing studies (original) (raw)
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Nature Genetics
A n increasing number of whole-genome/exome sequencing (WGS/WES) studies are being conducted to investigate the genetic bases of human diseases and traits, including the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine Program (TOPMed) of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the Genome Sequencing Program (GSP) of the National Human Genome Research Institute. Such studies enable the assessment of associations between complex traits and both coding and noncoding RVs (minor allele frequency (MAF) < 1%) across the genome. However, single-variant analyses typically have low power to identify associations with RVs 1-3. To improve power, variant set tests have been proposed to jointly test the effects of given sets of multiple RVs. These methods include the burden test 4-7 , sequence kernel association test (SKAT) 8 and their various combinations 9-12. In parallel, external biological information provided by functional annotations, such as conservation scores and predicted enhancer status, has been successfully used to prioritize plausibly causal common variants in fine-mapping studies, partitioning heritability in GWAS and predicting genetic risk 13-17. It is of substantial interest to incorporate variant functional annotations effectively to boost the power of RV analysis of WGS association studies 18,19 .
2019
Whole genome sequencing (WGS) studies are being widely conducted to identify rare variants associated with human diseases and disease-related traits. Classical single-marker association analyses for rare variants have limited power, and variant-set based analyses are commonly used to analyze rare variants. However, existing variant-set based approaches need to pre-specify genetic regions for analysis, and hence are not directly applicable to WGS data due to the large number of intergenic and intron regions that consist of a massive number of non-coding variants. The commonly used sliding window method requires pre-specifying fixed window sizes, which are often unknown as a priori, are difficult to specify in practice and are subject to limitations given genetic association region sizes are likely to vary across the genome and phenotypes. We propose a computationally-efficient and dynamic scan statistic method (Scan the Genome (SCANG)) for analyzing WGS data that flexibly detects the...
BMC Proceedings, 2011
Recent breakthroughs in next-generation sequencing technologies allow cost-effective methods for measuring a growing list of cellular properties, including DNA sequence and structural variation. Next-generation sequencing has the potential to revolutionize complex trait genetics by directly measuring common and rare genetic variants within a genome-wide context. Because for a given gene both rare and common causal variants can coexist and have independent effects on a trait, strategies that model the effects of both common and rare variants could enhance the power of identifying disease-associated genes. To date, little work has been done on integrating signals from common and rare variants into powerful statistics for finding disease genes in genome-wide association studies. In this analysis of the Genetic Analysis Workshop 17 data, we evaluate various strategies for association of rare, common, or a combination of both rare and common variants on quantitative phenotypes in unrelated individuals. We show that the analysis of common variants only using classical approaches can achieve higher power to detect causal genes than recently proposed rare variant methods and that strategies that combine association signals derived independently in rare and common variants can slightly increase the power compared to strategies that focus on the effect of either the rare variants or the common variants.
A Covering Method for Detecting Genetic Associations between Rare Variants and Common Phenotypes
PLoS Computational Biology, 2010
Genome wide association (GWA) studies, which test for association between common genetic markers and a disease phenotype, have shown varying degrees of success. While many factors could potentially confound GWA studies, we focus on the possibility that multiple, rare variants (RVs) may act in concert to influence disease etiology. Here, we describe an algorithm for RV analysis, RARECOVER. The algorithm combines a disparate collection of RVs with low effect and modest penetrance. Further, it does not require the rare variants be adjacent in location. Extensive simulations over a range of assumed penetrance and population attributable risk (PAR) values illustrate the power of our approach over other published methods, including the collapsing and weighted-collapsing strategies. To showcase the method, we apply RARECOVER to re-sequencing data from a cohort of 289 individuals at the extremes of Body Mass Index distribution (NCT00263042). Individual samples were re-sequenced at two genes, FAAH and MGLL, known to be involved in endocannabinoid metabolism (187Kbp for 148 obese and 150 controls). The RARECOVER analysis identifies exactly one significantly associated region in each gene, each about 5 Kbp in the upstream regulatory regions. The data suggests that the RVs help disrupt the expression of the two genes, leading to lowered metabolism of the corresponding cannabinoids. Overall, our results point to the power of including RVs in measuring genetic associations.
Rare variant association testing in the non-coding genome
Human Genetics, 2020
The development of next-generation sequencing technologies has opened-up some new possibilities to explore the contribution of genetic variants to human diseases and in particular that of rare variants. Statistical methods have been developed to test for association with rare variants that require the definition of testing units and, in these testing units, the selection of qualifying variants to include in the test. In the coding regions of the genome, testing units are usually the different genes and qualifying variants are selected based on their functional effects on the encoded proteins. Extending these tests to the non-coding regions of the genome is challenging. Testing units are difficult to define as the non-coding genome organisation is still rather unknown. Qualifying variants are difficult to select as the functional impact of non-coding variants on gene expression is hard to predict. These difficulties could explain why very few investigators so far have analysed the non-coding parts of their whole genome sequencing data. These non-coding parts yet represent the vast majority of the genome and some studies suggest that they could play a major role in disease susceptibility. In this review, we discuss recent experimental and statistical developments to gain knowledge on the non-coding genome and how this knowledge could be used to include rare non-coding variants in association tests. We describe the few studies that have considered variants from the non-coding genome in association tests and how they managed to define testing units and select qualifying variants.
PLoS genetics, 2015
Genome and exome sequencing in large cohorts enables characterization of the role of rare variation in complex diseases. Success in this endeavor, however, requires investigators to test a diverse array of genetic hypotheses which differ in the number, frequency and effect sizes of underlying causal variants. In this study, we evaluated the power of gene-based association methods to interrogate such hypotheses, and examined the implications for study design. We developed a flexible simulation approach, using 1000 Genomes data, to (a) generate sequence variation at human genes in up to 10K case-control samples, and (b) quantify the statistical power of a panel of widely used gene-based association tests under a variety of allelic architectures, locus effect sizes, and significance thresholds. For loci explaining ~1% of phenotypic variance underlying a common dichotomous trait, we find that all methods have low absolute power to achieve exome-wide significance (~5-20% power at α=2.5×1...
Genetic epidemiology, 2016
Family-based designs have been repeatedly shown to be powerful in detecting the significant rare variants associated with human diseases. Furthermore, human diseases are often defined by the outcomes of multiple phenotypes, and thus we expect multivariate family-based analyses may be very efficient in detecting associations with rare variants. However, few statistical methods implementing this strategy have been developed for family-based designs. In this report, we describe one such implementation: the multivariate family-based rare variant association tool (mFARVAT). mFARVAT is a quasi-likelihood-based score test for rare variant association analysis with multiple phenotypes, and tests both homogeneous and heterogeneous effects of each variant on multiple phenotypes. Simulation results show that the proposed method is generally robust and efficient for various disease models, and we identify some promising candidate genes associated with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The ...
Detecting rare variants for complex traits using family and unrelated data
Genetic Epidemiology, 2010
Large genome-wide association studies have been performed to detect common genetic variants involved in common diseases, but most of the variants found this way account for only a small portion of the trait variance. Furthermore, candidate gene based resequencing suggests that many rare genetic variants contribute to the trait variance of common diseases. Here we propose two designs, sibpair and unrelated-case designs, to detect rare genetic variants in either a candidate gene based or genome-wide association analysis. First we show that we can detect and classify together rare risk haplotypes using a relatively small sample with either of these designs, and then have increased power to test association in a larger case-control sample. This method can also be applied to resequencing data. Next we apply the method to the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (WTCCC) coronary artery disease and hypertension data, the latter being the only trait for which no genome-wide association evidence was reported in the original WTCCC study, and identify one interesting gene associated with hypertension and four associated with coronary artery disease at a genome-wide significance level of 5%. These results suggest that searching for rare genetic variants is feasible and can be fruitful in current genome-wide association studies, candidate gene studies or resequencing studies.
2021
Rare variant association tests (RVAT) have been developed to study the contribution of rare variants widely accessible through high-throughput sequencing technologies. RVAT require to aggregate rare variants in testing units and to filter variants to retain only the most likely causal ones. In the exome, genes are natural testing units and variants are usually filtered based on their functional consequences. However, when dealing with whole-genome sequence (WGS) data, both steps are challenging. No natural biological unit is available for aggregating rare variants. Sliding windows procedures have been proposed to circumvent this difficulty, however they are blind to biological information and result in a large number of tests.We propose a new strategy to perform RVAT on WGS data: “RAVA-FIRST” (RAre Variant Association using Functionally-InfoRmed STeps) comprising three steps. (1) New testing units are defined genome-wide based on functionally-adjusted Combined Annotation Dependent D...
BMC Bioinformatics, 2010
Background: Genome-wide association studies have been successful in finding common variants influencing common traits. However, these associations only account for a fraction of trait heritability. There has been a shift in the field towards studying low frequency and rare variants, which are now widely recognised as putative complex trait determinants. Despite this increasing focus on examining the role of low frequency and rare variants in complex disease susceptibility, there is a lack of user-friendly analytical packages implementing powerful association tests for the analysis of rare variants. Results: We have developed two software tools, CCRaVAT (Case-Control Rare Variant Analysis Tool) and QuTie (Quantitative Trait), which enable efficient large-scale analysis of low frequency and rare variants. Both programs implement a collapsing method examining the accumulation of low frequency and rare variants across a locus of interest that has more power than single variant analysis. CCRaVAT carries out case-control analyses whereas QuTie has been developed for continuous trait analysis. Conclusions: CCRaVAT and QuTie are easy to use software tools that allow users to perform genome-wide association analysis on low frequency and rare variants for both binary and quantitative traits. The software is freely available and provides the genetics community with a resource to perform association analysis on rarer genetic variants.