Strategies for Genome-Wide Family-Based Association Analysis for the Study of Integrative Genomics

• Activity Number: 23
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 6, 2006 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Biometrics Section
• Author(s): James Degnan*+ and Jessica Su and Cliona Molony and Eric Schadt and Benjamin Raby and Christoph Lange
• Companies: Harvard University and Harvard University and Rosetta Inpharmatics LLC and Rosetta Inpharmatics LLC/Merck Research Laboratories and Harvard University and Harvard School of Public Health
• Keywords: multiple testing ; family-based association test ; genetic association ; gene expression

Abstract

Successful strategies to bypass the multiple testing problem in genome-wide family-based association studies have been developed to identify genetic main effects (Van Steen et al., Nat Genet 2005, 37(7): 683) and have been successfully applied to 100k scans (Herbert et al., Science, 2006, in press). To get a deeper insight into the pathway of complex diseases, it will be crucial to identify gene-gene interactions. We therefore extended the testing strategy by Van Steen et al. to an integrative genomics setting using microarray expression data as univariate phenotypes to identify cis-acting genes. We applied our new analysis strategy to a genome-wide association study with expression data in 20 extended CEPH pedigrees. We compare the results of our new analysis strategy to those of Monks, et al. (Am J Hum Genet 2004, 75(6):1094).