Publication Date:
2014-02-28
Description:
Epistasis is the phenomenon whereby one polymorphism's effect on a trait depends on other polymorphisms present in the genome. The extent to which epistasis influences complex traits and contributes to their variation is a fundamental question in evolution and human genetics. Although often demonstrated in artificial gene manipulation studies in model organisms, and some examples have been reported in other species, few examples exist for epistasis among natural polymorphisms in human traits. Its absence from empirical findings may simply be due to low incidence in the genetic control of complex traits, but an alternative view is that it has previously been too technically challenging to detect owing to statistical and computational issues. Here we show, using advanced computation and a gene expression study design, that many instances of epistasis are found between common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). In a cohort of 846 individuals with 7,339 gene expression levels measured in peripheral blood, we found 501 significant pairwise interactions between common SNPs influencing the expression of 238 genes (P 〈 2.91 x 10(-16)). Replication of these interactions in two independent data sets showed both concordance of direction of epistatic effects (P = 5.56 x 10(-31)) and enrichment of interaction P values, with 30 being significant at a conservative threshold of P 〈 9.98 x 10(-5). Forty-four of the genetic interactions are located within 5 megabases of regions of known physical chromosome interactions (P = 1.8 x 10(-10)). Epistatic networks of three SNPs or more influence the expression levels of 129 genes, whereby one cis-acting SNP is modulated by several trans-acting SNPs. For example, MBNL1 is influenced by an additive effect at rs13069559, which itself is masked by trans-SNPs on 14 different chromosomes, with nearly identical genotype-phenotype maps for each cis-trans interaction. This study presents the first evidence, to our knowledge, for many instances of segregating common polymorphisms interacting to influence human traits.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3984375/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3984375/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Hemani, Gibran -- Shakhbazov, Konstantin -- Westra, Harm-Jan -- Esko, Tonu -- Henders, Anjali K -- McRae, Allan F -- Yang, Jian -- Gibson, Greg -- Martin, Nicholas G -- Metspalu, Andres -- Franke, Lude -- Montgomery, Grant W -- Visscher, Peter M -- Powell, Joseph E -- AA014041/AA/NIAAA NIH HHS/ -- AA07535/AA/NIAAA NIH HHS/ -- AA10248/AA/NIAAA NIH HHS/ -- AA13320/AA/NIAAA NIH HHS/ -- AA13321/AA/NIAAA NIH HHS/ -- AA13326/AA/NIAAA NIH HHS/ -- DA12854/DA/NIDA NIH HHS/ -- GM057091/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- GM099568/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- P01 GM099568/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- R01 GM075091/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- England -- Nature. 2014 Apr 10;508(7495):249-53. doi: 10.1038/nature13005. Epub 2014 Feb 26.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉1] Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia [2] University of Queensland Diamantina Institute, University of Queensland, Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia. ; Department of Genetics, University Medical Center Groningen, University of Groningen, Hanzeplein 1, 9700 RB Groningen, The Netherlands. ; 1] Estonian Genome Center, University of Tartu, Tartu 51010, Estonia [2] Medical and Population Genetics, Broad Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, USA [3] Divisions of Endocrinology, Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. ; Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Queensland 4006, Australia. ; Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia. ; School of Biology and Centre for Integrative Genomics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, USA. ; Estonian Genome Center, University of Tartu, Tartu 51010, Estonia. ; 1] Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Queensland 4006, Australia [2]. ; 1] Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia [2] University of Queensland Diamantina Institute, University of Queensland, Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, Queensland 4072, Australia [3].〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24572353" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Cohort Studies
;
Epistasis, Genetic/*genetics
;
Europe/ethnology
;
Female
;
Gene Expression Profiling
;
Gene Expression Regulation/*genetics
;
Genetic Association Studies
;
Humans
;
Linkage Disequilibrium
;
Male
;
Pedigree
;
Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide/genetics
;
Quantitative Trait Loci
;
Reproducibility of Results
;
Transcription, Genetic/*genetics
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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