The genetic architecture of complex traits across diverse populations

Karoline Kuchenbaecker (primary)
UCL Genetics Institute (GEE)
UCL
Cathryn Lewis (secondary)
Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre
King’s College London

Abstract

It is unclear how the genetic architecture of complex traits differs across populations. Our aims are to determine
(1) how genetic variants affecting a trait differ across populations,
(2) whether genes play a similar role relative to environment, and
(3) if selection has affected these factors.
Using ~300,000 samples with non-European ancestry, the student will characterise the genetics of mental health and biomarker traits and link them to population genetic forces via simulation.
This work will advance our understanding of the basic principles of genetic architecture, and may yield new biological insights pertinent to specific population groups.


References

Agarwala, V., Flannick, J., Sunyaev, S., GoT2D Consortium, & Altshuler, D. (2013). Evaluating empirical bounds on complex disease genetic architecture. Nature Genetics, 45(12), 1418–1427. https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.2804
Finucane, H., Reshef, Y., Anttila, V., Slowikowski, K., Gusev, A., Byrnes, A., … Price, A. (2017). Heritability enrichment of specifically expressed genes identifies disease-relevant tissues and cell types. BioRxiv, 103069. https://doi.org/10.1101/103069
Gilly, A., Suveges, D., Kuchenbaecker, K., Pollard, M. O., Southam, L., Hatzikotoulas, K., … Zeggini, E. (2018). Cohort-wide deep whole genome sequencing and the allelic architecture of complex traits. BioRxiv, 283481. https://doi.org/10.1101/283481
Popejoy, A. B., & Fullerton, S. M. (2016). Genomics is failing on diversity. Nature News, 538(7624), 161. https://doi.org/10.1038/538161a
Wojcik, G., Graff, M., Nishimura, K. K., Tao, R., Haessler, J., Gignoux, C. R., … Carlson, C. S. (2017). Genetic Diversity Turns a New PAGE in Our Understanding of Complex Traits. BioRxiv, 188094. https://doi.org/10.1101/188094
Wray, N. R., Ripke, S., Mattheisen, M., Trzaskowski, M., Byrne, E. M., Abdellaoui, A., … Sullivan, P. F. (2018). Genome-wide association analyses identify 44 risk variants and refine the genetic architecture of major depression. Nature Genetics, 50(5), 668–681. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-018-0090-3
Zeng, J., Vlaming, R. de, Wu, Y., Robinson, M., Lloyd-Jones, L., Yengo, L., … Yang, J. (2017). Widespread signatures of negative selection in the genetic architecture of human complex traits. BioRxiv, 145755. https://doi.org/10.1101/145755


BBSRC Area
Genes, development and STEM* approaches to biology
Area of Biology
Genetics
Techniques & Approaches
BioinformaticsGeneticsMathematics / StatisticsSimulation / Modelling