Project Details
Description
ABSTRACT
Human complex traits are jointly influenced by genetic and environmental risk factors, whose exact contributions
are often subject to extensive debate. Detailed environmental risk factors are not often available, which makes
it hard to jointly assess the genetic and environmental contributions. Yet, the emergence of large-scale national
biobanks as well international genetic studies offers a great opportunity to make up for this knowledge gap. In
particular, as study participants come from diverse locations, geospatial information of the study participants can
be used as a proxy for environmental exposure. Models that incorporate geospatial information of study
participants will lead to improved power for association analysis and more accurate heritability estimates. In this
application, we propose to develop a Spatial MIxed Linear Effect model (SMILE) for improved association
analysis and heritability estimation and Spatial Meta-Analysis Regression Test (SMART) for more powerful
meta-analyses of genetic association studies. We will apply them to UK Biobank, MarketScan insurance billing
database, TOPMed sequence data, and a large multi-ethnic GWAS meta-analysis of smoking and drinking
addictions. To achieve the proposed research aims, we assembled a strong research team with complementary
expertise from statistical genetics, addiction genetics, lung function genetics, biomedical informatics, and
environmental epidemiology. Methods and tools developed from this study will open up new avenues for
analyzing national biobanks such as UK Biobank and All of Us cohorts, and global consortium studies. The
results from this study will help elucidate the genetic architecture of smoking/drinking addiction and lung function
among other traits.
Status | Finished |
---|---|
Effective start/end date | 9/21/22 → 8/31/23 |
Funding
- National Human Genome Research Institute: $777,830.00
Fingerprint
Explore the research topics touched on by this project. These labels are generated based on the underlying awards/grants. Together they form a unique fingerprint.