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Chan, Y.* ; Salem, R.M.* ; Hsu, Y.H.* ; McMahon, G.* ; Pers, T.H.* ; Vedantam, S.* ; Esko, T.* ; Guo, M.H.* ; Lim, E.T.* ; GIANT Consortium (Albrecht, E. ; Gieger, C. ; Grallert, H. ; Heid, I.M. ; Illig, T. ; Müller-Nurasyid, M. ; Peters, A. ; Thorand, B. ; Wichmann, H.-E.) ; Franke, L.* ; Smith, G.D.* ; Strachan, D.P.* ; Hirschhorn, J.N.*

Genome-wide analysis of body proportion classifies height-associated variants by mechanism of action and implicates genes important for skeletal development.

Am. J. Hum. Genet. 96, 695-708 (2015)
DOI
Open Access Green as soon as Postprint is submitted to ZB.
Human height is a composite measurement, reflecting the sum of leg, spine, and head lengths. Many common variants influence total height, but the effects of these or other variants on the components of height (body proportion) remain largely unknown. We studied sitting height ratio (SHR), the ratio of sitting height to total height, to identify such effects in 3,545 African Americans and 21,590 individuals of European ancestry. We found that SHR is heritable: 26% and 39% of the total variance of SHR can be explained by common variants in European and African Americans, respectively, and global European admixture is negatively correlated with SHR in African Americans (r(2) approximate to 0.03). Six regions reached genome-wide significance (p < 5 x 10(-8)) for association with SHR and overlapped biological candidate genes, including TBX2 and IGFBP3. We found that 130 of 670 height-associated variants are nominally associated (p < 0.05) with SHR, more than expected by chance (p = 5 x 10(-40)). At these 130 loci, the height-increasing alleles are associated with either a decrease (71 loci) or increase (59 loci) in SHR, suggesting that different height loci disproportionally affect either leg length or spine/head length. Pathway analyses via DEPICT revealed that height loci affecting SHR, and especially those affecting leg length, show enrichment of different biological pathways (e.g., bone/cartilage/growth plate pathways) than do loci with no effect on SHR (e.g., embryonic development). These results highlight the value of using a pair of related but orthogonal phenotypes, in this case SHR with height, as a prism to dissect the biology underlying genetic associations in polygenic traits and diseases.
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Publication type Article: Journal article
Document type Scientific Article
Corresponding Author
Keywords Cardiovascular Risk-factors; Leg Length; Atherosclerosis Risk; African-americans; Binding-protein; Adult Height; Growth; Heart; Health; Components
ISSN (print) / ISBN 0002-9297
e-ISSN 1537-6605
Journal American Journal of Human Genetics, The
Quellenangaben Volume: 96, Issue: 5, Pages: 695-708 Article Number: , Supplement: ,
Publisher Elsevier
Publishing Place New York, NY
Non-patent literature Publications
Reviewing status Peer reviewed
Institute(s) Institute of Epidemiology II (EPI2)
Institute of Genetic Epidemiology (IGE)