Leveraging information between multiple population groups and traits improves fine-mapping resolution.

Statistical fine-mapping helps to pinpoint likely causal variants underlying genetic association signals. Its resolution can be improved by (i) leveraging information between traits; and (ii) exploiting differences in linkage disequilibrium structure between diverse population groups. Using association summary statistics, MGflashfm jointly fine-maps signals from multiple traits and population groups; MGfm uses an analogous framework to analyse each trait separately. We also provide a practical approach to fine-mapping with out-of-sample reference panels. In simulation studies we show that MGflashfm and MGfm are well-calibrated and that the mean proportion of causal variants with PP > 0.80 is above 0.75 (MGflashfm) and 0.70 (MGfm). In our analysis of four lipids traits across five population groups, MGflashfm gives a median 99% credible set reduction of 10.5% over MGfm. MGflashfm and MGfm only require summary level data, making them very useful fine-mapping tools in consortia efforts where individual-level data cannot be shared.

Multi-trait discovery and fine-mapping of lipid loci in 125,000 individuals of African ancestry.

Most genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for lipid traits focus on the separate analysis of lipid traits. Moreover, there are limited GWASs evaluating the genetic variants associated with multiple lipid traits in African ancestry. To further identify and localize loci with pleiotropic effects on lipid traits, we conducted a genome-wide meta-analysis, multi-trait analysis of GWAS (MTAG), and multi-trait fine-mapping (flashfm) in 125,000 individuals of African ancestry. Our meta-analysis and MTAG identified four and 14 novel loci associated with lipid traits, respectively. flashfm yielded an 18% mean reduction in the 99% credible set size compared to single-trait fine-mapping with JAM. Moreover, we identified more genetic variants with a posterior probability of causality >0.9 with flashfm than with JAM. In conclusion, we identified additional novel loci associated with lipid traits, and flashfm reduced the 99% credible set size to identify causal genetic variants associated with multiple lipid traits in African ancestry.

Flashfm-ivis: interactive visualization for fine-mapping of multiple quantitative traits.

SUMMARY: flashfm-ivis provides a suite of interactive visualization plots to view potential causal genetic variants that underlie associations that are shared or distinct between multiple quantitative traits and compares results between single- and multi-trait fine-mapping. Unique features include network diagrams that show joint effects between variants for each trait and regional association plots that integrate fine-mapping results, all with user-controlled zoom features for an interactive exploration of potential causal variants across traits. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: flashfm-ivis is an open-source software under the MIT license. It is available as an interactive web-based tool (http://shiny.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/apps/flashfm-ivis/) and as an R package. Code and documentation are available at https://github.com/fz-cambridge/flashfm-ivis and https://zenodo.org/record/6376244#.YjnarC-l2X0. Additional features can be downloaded as standalone R libraries to encourage reuse. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary information are available at Bioinformatics online.

Stochastic search and joint fine-mapping increases accuracy and identifies previously unreported associations in immune-mediated diseases.

Thousands of genetic variants are associated with human disease risk, but linkage disequilibrium (LD) hinders fine-mapping the causal variants. Both lack of power, and joint tagging of two or more distinct causal variants by a single non-causal SNP, lead to inaccuracies in fine-mapping, with stochastic search more robust than stepwise. We develop a computationally efficient multinomial fine-mapping (MFM) approach that borrows information between diseases in a Bayesian framework. We show that MFM has greater accuracy than single disease analysis when shared causal variants exist, and negligible loss of precision otherwise. MFM analysis of six immune-mediated diseases reveals causal variants undetected in individual disease analysis, including in IL2RA where we confirm functional effects of multiple causal variants using allele-specific expression in sorted CD4+ T cells from genotype-selected individuals. MFM has the potential to increase fine-mapping resolution in related diseases enabling the identification of associated cellular and molecular phenotypes.

A two-stage inter-rater approach for enrichment testing of variants associated with multiple traits.

Shared genetic aetiology may explain the co-occurrence of diseases in individuals more often than expected by chance. On identifying associated variants shared between two traits, one objective is to determine whether such overlap may be explained by specific genomic characteristics (eg, functional annotation). In clinical studies, inter-rater agreement approaches assess concordance among expert opinions on the presence/absence of a complex disease for each subject. We adapt a two-stage inter-rater agreement model to the genetic association setting to identify features predictive of overlap variants, while accounting for their marginal trait associations. The resulting corrected overlap and marginal enrichment test (COMET) also assesses enrichment at the individual trait level. Multiple categories may be tested simultaneously and the method is computationally efficient, not requiring permutations to assess significance. In an extensive simulation study, COMET identifies features predictive of enrichment with high power and has well-calibrated type I error. In contrast, testing for overlap with a single-trait enrichment test has inflated type I error. COMET is applied to three glycaemic traits using a set of functional annotation categories as predictors, followed by further analyses that focus on tissue-specific regulatory variants. The results support previous findings that regulatory variants in pancreatic islets are enriched for fasting glucose-associated variants, and give insight into differences/similarities between characteristics of variants associated with glycaemic traits. Also, despite regulatory variants in pancreatic islets being enriched for variants that are marginally associated with fasting glucose and fasting insulin, there is no enrichment of shared variants between the traits.

Transancestral fine-mapping of four type 2 diabetes susceptibility loci highlights potential causal regulatory mechanisms.

To gain insight into potential regulatory mechanisms through which the effects of variants at four established type 2 diabetes (T2D) susceptibility loci (CDKAL1, CDKN2A-B, IGF2BP2 and KCNQ1) are mediated, we undertook transancestral fine-mapping in 22 086 cases and 42 539 controls of East Asian, European, South Asian, African American and Mexican American descent. Through high-density imputation and conditional analyses, we identified seven distinct association signals at these four loci, each with allelic effects on T2D susceptibility that were homogenous across ancestry groups. By leveraging differences in the structure of linkage disequilibrium between diverse populations, and increased sample size, we localised the variants most likely to drive each distinct association signal. We demonstrated that integration of these genetic fine-mapping data with genomic annotation can highlight potential causal regulatory elements in T2D-relevant tissues. These analyses provide insight into the mechanisms through which T2D association signals are mediated, and suggest future routes to understanding the biology of specific disease susceptibility loci.

Trans-ethnic study design approaches for fine-mapping.

Studies that traverse ancestrally diverse populations may increase power to detect novel loci and improve fine-mapping resolution of causal variants by leveraging linkage disequilibrium differences between ethnic groups. The inclusion of African ancestry samples may yield further improvements because of low linkage disequilibrium and high genetic heterogeneity. We investigate the fine-mapping resolution of trans-ethnic fixed-effects meta-analysis for five type II diabetes loci, under various settings of ancestral composition (European, East Asian, African), allelic heterogeneity, and causal variant minor allele frequency. In particular, three settings of ancestral composition were compared: (1) single ancestry (European), (2) moderate ancestral diversity (European and East Asian), and (3) high ancestral diversity (European, East Asian, and African). Our simulations suggest that the European/Asian and European ancestry-only meta-analyses consistently attain similar fine-mapping resolution. The inclusion of African ancestry samples in the meta-analysis leads to a marked improvement in fine-mapping resolution.

A Bayesian Approach to the Overlap Analysis of Epidemiologically Linked Traits.

Diseases often cooccur in individuals more often than expected by chance, and may be explained by shared underlying genetic etiology. A common approach to genetic overlap analyses is to use summary genome-wide association study data to identify single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that are associated with multiple traits at a selected P-value threshold. However, P-values do not account for differences in power, whereas Bayes' factors (BFs) do, and may be approximated using summary statistics. We use simulation studies to compare the power of frequentist and Bayesian approaches with overlap analyses, and to decide on appropriate thresholds for comparison between the two methods. It is empirically illustrated that BFs have the advantage over P-values of a decreasing type I error rate as study size increases for single-disease associations. Consequently, the overlap analysis of traits from different-sized studies encounters issues in fair P-value threshold selection, whereas BFs are adjusted automatically. Extensive simulations show that Bayesian overlap analyses tend to have higher power than those that assess association strength with P-values, particularly in low-power scenarios. Calibration tables between BFs and P-values are provided for a range of sample sizes, as well as an approximation approach for sample sizes that are not in the calibration table. Although P-values are sometimes thought more intuitive, these tables assist in removing the opaqueness of Bayesian thresholds and may also be used in the selection of a BF threshold to meet a certain type I error rate. An application of our methods is used to identify variants associated with both obesity and osteoarthritis.

Genome-wide association analysis of imputed rare variants: application to seven common complex diseases.

Genome-wide association studies have been successful in identifying loci contributing effects to a range of complex human traits. The majority of reproducible associations within these loci are with common variants, each of modest effect, which together explain only a small proportion of heritability. It has been suggested that much of the unexplained genetic component of complex traits can thus be attributed to rare variation. However, genome-wide association study genotyping chips have been designed primarily to capture common variation, and thus are underpowered to detect the effects of rare variants. Nevertheless, we demonstrate here, by simulation, that imputation from an existing scaffold of genome-wide genotype data up to high-density reference panels has the potential to identify rare variant associations with complex traits, without the need for costly re-sequencing experiments. By application of this approach to genome-wide association studies of seven common complex diseases, imputed up to publicly available reference panels, we identify genome-wide significant evidence of rare variant association in PRDM10 with coronary artery disease and multiple genes in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) with type 1 diabetes. The results of our analyses highlight that genome-wide association studies have the potential to offer an exciting opportunity for gene discovery through association with rare variants, conceivably leading to substantial advancements in our understanding of the genetic architecture underlying complex human traits.

ARIEL and AMELIA: testing for an accumulation of rare variants using next-generation sequencing data.

OBJECTIVES: There is increasing evidence that rare variants play a role in some complex traits, but their analysis is not straightforward. Locus-based tests become necessary due to low power in rare variant single-point association analyses. In addition, variant quality scores are available for sequencing data, but are rarely taken into account. Here, we propose two locus-based methods that incorporate variant quality scores: a regression-based collapsing approach and an allele-matching method. METHODS: Using simulated sequencing data we compare 4 locus-based tests of trait association under different scenarios of data quality. We test two collapsing-based approaches and two allele-matching-based approaches, taking into account variant quality scores and ignoring variant quality scores. We implement the collapsing and allele-matching approaches accounting for variant quality in the freely available ARIEL and AMELIA software. RESULTS: The incorporation of variant quality scores in locus-based association tests has power advantages over weighting each variant equally. The allele-matching methods are robust to the presence of both protective and risk variants in a locus, while collapsing methods exhibit a dramatic loss of power in this scenario. CONCLUSIONS: The incorporation of variant quality scores should be a standard protocol when performing locus-based association analysis on sequencing data. The ARIEL and AMELIA software implement collapsing and allele-matching locus association analysis methods, respectively, that allow the incorporation of variant quality scores.

Imputation of rare variants in next-generation association studies.

The role of rare variants has become a focus in the search for association with complex traits. Imputation is a powerful and cost-efficient tool to access variants that have not been directly typed, but there are several challenges when imputing rare variants, most notably reference panel selection. Extensions to rare variant association tests to incorporate genotype uncertainty from imputation are discussed, as well as the use of imputed low-frequency and rare variants in the study of population isolates.

Regression models, scan statistics and reappearance probabilities to detect regions of association between gene expression and copy number.

Early studies of breast cancer microarray data used linear models to quantify the relationship between measures of gene expression (GE) and copy number (CN) obtained from tumour samples. Motivated by a study of women with axillary node-negative breast cancer, we propose a regression-based scan statistic to identify within-chromosome clusters of genetic probes that exhibit association between GE and CN, while accounting for tumour characteristics known to be prognostic for clinical outcome. As a measure of the association between GE and CN, for each genetic probe available from a microarray we regress GE on CN, and include subject-specific covariates. In the development of the scan statistic, the within-chromosome spatial distribution of the subset of probes with a statistically significant association is approximated by a Poisson process. By incorporating the distance between the probe positions, the scan statistic accounts for the spatial nature of CN alterations. Regions identified as clusters of significant associations are hypothesized to harbour genes involved in breast cancer progression. Using simulations, we examine the sensitivity of the method to certain factors, and to address issues of repeatability, we consider reappearance probabilities for each probe within detected regions and assess the utility of a quantity estimated by bootstrap sample frequencies. Applications of the proposed method to joint analysis of GE and CN in breast tumours, with and without an informative covariate, and comparisons with alternative methods suggest that inclusion of covariates and the use of a regional test statistic can serve to refine regions for further investigation including the analysis of their association with outcome.

Region-based analysis in genome-wide association study of Framingham Heart Study blood lipid phenotypes.

Due to the high-dimensionality of single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data, region-based methods are an attractive approach to the identification of genetic variation associated with a certain phenotype. A common approach to defining regions is to identify the most significant SNPs from a single-SNP association analysis, and then use a gene database to obtain a list of genes proximal to the identified SNPs. Alternatively, regions may be defined statistically, via a scan statistic. After categorizing SNPs as significant or not (based on the single-SNP association p-values), a scan statistic is useful to identify regions that contain more significant SNPs than expected by chance. Important features of this method are that regions are defined statistically, so that there is no dependence on a gene database, and both gene and inter-gene regions can be detected. In the analysis of blood-lipid phenotypes from the Framingham Heart Study (FHS), we compared statistically defined regions with those formed from the top single SNP tests. Although we missed a number of single SNPs, we also identified many additional regions not found as SNP-database regions and avoided issues related to region definition. In addition, analyses of candidate genes for high-density lipoprotein, low-density lipoprotein, and triglyceride levels suggested that associations detected with region-based statistics are also found using the scan statistic approach.

Gene- or region-based analysis of genome-wide association studies.

With rapid advances in genotyping technologies in recent years and the growing number of available markers, genome-wide association studies are emerging as promising approaches for the study of complex diseases and traits. However, there are several challenges with analysis and interpretation of such data. First, there is a massive multiple testing problem, due to the large number of markers that need to be analyzed, leading to an increased risk of false positives and decreased ability for association studies to detect truly associated markers. In particular, the ability to detect modest genetic effects can be severely compromised. Second, a genetic association of a given single-nucleotide polymorphism as determined by univariate statistical analyses does not typically explain biologically interesting features, and often requires subsequent interpretation using a higher unit, such as a gene or region, for example, as defined by haplotype blocks. Third, missing genotypes in the data set and other data quality issues can pose challenges when comparisons across platforms and replications are planned. Finally, depending on the type of univariate analysis, computational burden can arise as the number of markers continues to grow into the millions. One way to deal with these and related challenges is to consider higher units for the analysis, such as genes or regions. This article summarizes analytical methods and strategies that have been proposed and applied by Group 16 to two genome-wide association data sets made available through the Genetic Analysis Workshop 16.