School of Medicine Publications and Presentations
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-23-2016
Abstract
Large consortia have revealed hundreds of genetic loci associated with anthropometric traits, one trait at a time. We examined whether genetic variants affect body shape as a composite phenotype that is represented by a combination of anthropometric traits. We developed an approach that calculates averaged PCs (AvPCs) representing body shape derived from six anthropometric traits (body mass index, height, weight, waist and hip circumference, waist-to-hip ratio). The first four AvPCs explain >99% of the variability, are heritable, and associate with cardiometabolic outcomes. We performed genome-wide association analyses for each body shape composite phenotype across 65 studies and meta-analysed summary statistics. We identify six novel loci: LEMD2 and CD47 for AvPC1, RPS6KA5/C14orf159 and GANAB for AvPC3, and ARL15 and ANP32 for AvPC4. Our findings highlight the value of using multiple traits to define complex phenotypes for discovery, which are not captured by single-trait analyses, and may shed light onto new pathways.
Recommended Citation
Ried, J., Jeff M., J., Chu, A. et al. A principal component meta-analysis on multiple anthropometric traits identifies novel loci for body shape. Nat Commun 7, 13357 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms13357
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Publication Title
Nature Communications
DOI
10.1038/ncomms13357
Academic Level
faculty
Mentor/PI Department
Office of Human Genetics
Comments
Copyright © 2016, The Author(s)