Joint rare variant association test of the average and individual effects for sequencing studies.

For many complex traits, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) identified from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) only explain a small percentage of heritability. Next generation sequencing technology makes it possible to explore unexplained heritability by identifying rare variants (RVs). Exis...

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Main Authors: Yuanjia Wang, Yin-Hsiu Chen, Qiong Yang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2012-01-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0032485&type=printable
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author Yuanjia Wang
Yin-Hsiu Chen
Qiong Yang
author_facet Yuanjia Wang
Yin-Hsiu Chen
Qiong Yang
author_sort Yuanjia Wang
collection DOAJ
description For many complex traits, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) identified from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) only explain a small percentage of heritability. Next generation sequencing technology makes it possible to explore unexplained heritability by identifying rare variants (RVs). Existing tests designed for RVs look for optimal strategies to combine information across multiple variants. Many of the tests have good power when the true underlying associations are either in the same direction or in opposite directions. We propose three tests for examining the association between a phenotype and RVs, where two of them jointly consider the common association across RVs and the individual deviations from the common effect. On one hand, similar to some of the best existing methods, the individual deviations are modeled as random effects to borrow information across multiple RVs. On the other hand, unlike the existing methods which pool individual effects towards zero, we pool them towards a possibly non-zero common effect by adding a pooled variant into the model. The common effect and the individual effects are jointly tested. We show through extensive simulations that at least one of the three tests proposed here is the most powerful or very close to being the most powerful in various settings of true models. This is appealing in practice because the direction and size of the true effects of the associated RVs are unknown. Researchers can apply the developed tests to improve power under a wide range of true models.
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spelling doaj-art-9e14d86dfb1448e48fcdc3ea74c7e7a12025-08-20T03:26:38ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032012-01-0173e3248510.1371/journal.pone.0032485Joint rare variant association test of the average and individual effects for sequencing studies.Yuanjia WangYin-Hsiu ChenQiong YangFor many complex traits, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) identified from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) only explain a small percentage of heritability. Next generation sequencing technology makes it possible to explore unexplained heritability by identifying rare variants (RVs). Existing tests designed for RVs look for optimal strategies to combine information across multiple variants. Many of the tests have good power when the true underlying associations are either in the same direction or in opposite directions. We propose three tests for examining the association between a phenotype and RVs, where two of them jointly consider the common association across RVs and the individual deviations from the common effect. On one hand, similar to some of the best existing methods, the individual deviations are modeled as random effects to borrow information across multiple RVs. On the other hand, unlike the existing methods which pool individual effects towards zero, we pool them towards a possibly non-zero common effect by adding a pooled variant into the model. The common effect and the individual effects are jointly tested. We show through extensive simulations that at least one of the three tests proposed here is the most powerful or very close to being the most powerful in various settings of true models. This is appealing in practice because the direction and size of the true effects of the associated RVs are unknown. Researchers can apply the developed tests to improve power under a wide range of true models.https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0032485&type=printable
spellingShingle Yuanjia Wang
Yin-Hsiu Chen
Qiong Yang
Joint rare variant association test of the average and individual effects for sequencing studies.
PLoS ONE
title Joint rare variant association test of the average and individual effects for sequencing studies.
title_full Joint rare variant association test of the average and individual effects for sequencing studies.
title_fullStr Joint rare variant association test of the average and individual effects for sequencing studies.
title_full_unstemmed Joint rare variant association test of the average and individual effects for sequencing studies.
title_short Joint rare variant association test of the average and individual effects for sequencing studies.
title_sort joint rare variant association test of the average and individual effects for sequencing studies
url https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0032485&type=printable
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AT yinhsiuchen jointrarevariantassociationtestoftheaverageandindividualeffectsforsequencingstudies
AT qiongyang jointrarevariantassociationtestoftheaverageandindividualeffectsforsequencingstudies