Making Robust Use of Parental Genotype Data for Finding Effects of Variants on the X Chromosome

Public Deposited
Analytics

Downloadable Content

Download PDF
Request Version for Screen Reader
Last Modified
  • March 19, 2019
Creator
  • Wise, Alison
    • Affiliation: Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Biostatistics
Abstract
  • The X chromosome is generally understudied in association studies, in part because the analyst has limited methodological options. We are developing statistical methods for causal association for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP markers) on the X. The focus of our work is on case-parent triad association studies. Most current family-based methods extend the transmission disequilibrium test (TDT) to the X chromosome. We propose a new method to study association in case-parent triads: the parent-informed likelihood ratio test for the X chromosome (PIX-LRT). Our method provides estimation of relative risks and takes advantage of parental genotype information and the sex of the affected offspring. Under a parental allelic exchangeability assumption for the X, if for a given locus case-parent triads are complete, the parents of affected offspring provide an independent replication sample for the estimates based on transmission distortion to the affected offspring. For each offspring sex we can combine the parent-level and the offspring-level information to form a likelihood ratio test statistic; we then combine the two to form a single composite test statistic, which we show offers better power than existing methods. Maternal SNP effects can influence the development and later health of the offspring through prenatal effects, regardless of which alleles are transmitted by the mother to her offspring. Previously, using triads alone, no method had been developed without an assumption of Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE) to test maternal effects on the X chromosome. For the second project we extended PIX-LRT to discover maternal X-chromosome SNP effects. Our third project concerns the identification and estimation of effects of X haplotypes. For case-parent triads, the X-chromosome haplotype phases can be inferred. With phase information, as is available when triad genotypes are nonmissing, the problem can be managed via an extension of the PIX-LRT from a two-allele problem to a k-allele problem, where the “alleles” are now the existing haplotypes at the locus under study. The extended approach relies on a permutation-based p-value based on the most significant individual haplotype effect. Our methods are applied to a dataset consisting of over 2000 triads in which the affected offspring have an oral cleft.
Date of publication
Keyword
Subject
DOI
Identifier
Resource type
Rights statement
  • In Copyright
Advisor
  • Zou, Fei
  • Sun, Wei
  • Lin, Danyu
  • Fry, Rebecca
  • Herring, Amy
  • Shi, Min
  • Weinberg, Clarice
Degree
  • Doctor of Public Health
Degree granting institution
  • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Graduate School
Graduation year
  • 2015
Language
Publisher
Place of publication
  • Chapel Hill, NC
Access right
  • There are no restrictions to this item.
Date uploaded
  • August 25, 2015

Relations

Parents:

This work has no parents.

Items

Thumbnail Title Date Uploaded Visibility Actions
file details Wise_unc_0153D_15462.pdf 2019-04-12 Public Download