CSAIL Event Calendar

Dissecting Genome-Wide Associations with Two Obesity Traits

Obesity is a major health issue affecting more than a billion and a half people worldwide. Related biological traits, such as circulating level of the metabolic hormone adiponectin in the blood and waist-hip ratio, have substantial genetic components (heritability ~30-70%). Genome-wide association studies have systematically aided in the understanding of the genetic architecture of these complex traits. In this talk, I will describe two stories of analyzing genome-wide association signals for adiponectin level and waist-hip ratio.

The first story involves tracking down the uncommon variant largely responsible for an adiponectin signal observed in ~3,600 Filipinos. Sequencing of the coding region of the adiponectin gene detected a population-specific missense variant, the presence of which resulted in artificially low quantification of adiponectin level using the original immunoassay.

The second story involves observations of sexual dimorphism in the genetics of central fat distribution and evidence of genomic regions harboring multiple independent waist-hip ratio association signals in ~221,000 Europeans from the Genetic Investigation of Anthropometric Traits (GIANT) Consortium. Together, these findings further contribute to our understanding of the genetic architecture of two obesity traits.

See other events happening in June 2012