The gene has been proposed as an attractive unit of analysis for association studies, but a simple yet valid, powerful, and sufficiently fast method of evaluating the statistical significance of all genes in large, genome-wide datasets has been lacking. Here we propose the use of an extended Simes test that integrates functional information and association evidence to combine the p values of th...

A genome-wide association study of neighborhood characteristics and family income finds heritability, identifies single nucleotide polymorphisms and shows genetic correlates of these traits with numerous other health and cognitive traits. Different mechanisms behind genetic correlations imply different interpretations of association and causality.

Thousands of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have been conducted to identify the genetic variants associated with complex disorders. However, only a small proportion of phenotypic variances can be explained by the reported variants. Moreover, many GWAS failed to identify genetic variants associated with disorders displaying hereditary features. The "missing heritability" problem can be p...

It is a commonly held belief that most complex diseases (e.g., diabetes, asthma, cancer) are affected in part by interactions between genes and environmental factors. However, investigators conducting genome-wide association studies typically test for only the marginal effects of each genetic marker on disease. In this paper, the authors propose an efficient and easily implemented 2-step analys...

The protection of privacy of individual-level information in genome-wide association study (GWAS) databases has been a major concern of researchers following the publication of "an attack" on GWAS data by Homer et al. (2008). Traditional statistical methods for confidentiality and privacy protection of statistical databases do not scale well to deal with GWAS data, especially in terms of guaran...

The availability of very large number of markers by modern technology makes genome-wide association studies very popular. The usual approach is to test single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) one at a time for association with disease status. However, it may not be possible to detect marginally significant effects by single-SNP analysis. Simultaneous analysis of SNPs enables detection of even th...

Twin registries around the globe have collected DNA samples from large numbers of monozygotic and dizygotic twins. The twin sample collections are frequently used as controls in disease-specific studies together with non-twins. This approach is unbiased under the hypothesis that twins and singletons are comparable in terms of allele frequencies; i.e. there are no genetic variants associated wit...

OBJECTIVE To examine associations between aggregate genetic risk and Alzheimer disease (AD) markers in stages preceding the clinical symptoms of dementia using data from 2 large observational cohort studies. METHODS We computed polygenic risk scores (PGRS) using summary statistics from the International Genomics of Alzheimer's Project genome-wide association study of AD. Associations between ...

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) based on linkage disequilibrium (LD) have been used to detect QTLs underlying complex traits in major crops. In this study, we collected 218 barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) lines including wild barley and cultivated barley from China, Canada, Australia, and Europe. A total of 408 polymorphic markers were used for population structure and LD analysis. GWAS for ...

Recent technological advances coupled with large sample sets have uncovered many factors underlying the genetic basis of traits and the predisposition to complex disease, but much is left to discover. A common thread to most genetic investigations is familial relationships. Close relatives can be identified from family records, and more distant relatives can be inferred from large panels of gen...