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A subregion‐based burden test for simultaneous identification of susceptibility loci and subregions within
Author(s) -
Zhu Bin,
Mirabello Lisa,
Chatterjee Nilanjan
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
genetic epidemiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.301
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 1098-2272
pISSN - 0741-0395
DOI - 10.1002/gepi.22134
Subject(s) - type i and type ii errors , identification (biology) , computational biology , biology , multiple comparisons problem , gene , statistical hypothesis testing , false discovery rate , statistical power , association test , function (biology) , genetics , genetic association , r package , statistics , mathematics , genotype , single nucleotide polymorphism , botany
In rare variant association studies, aggregating rare and/or low frequency variants, may increase statistical power for detection of the underlying susceptibility gene or region. However, it is unclear which variants, or class of them, in a gene contribute most to the association. We proposed a subregion-based burden test (REBET) to simultaneously select susceptibility genes and identify important underlying subregions. The subregions are predefined by shared common biologic characteristics, such as the protein domain or functional impact. Based on a subset-based approach considering local correlations between combinations of test statistics of subregions, REBET is able to properly control the type I error rate while adjusting for multiple comparisons in a computationally efficient manner. Simulation studies show that REBET can achieve power competitive to alternative methods when rare variants cluster within subregions. In two case studies, REBET is able to identify known disease susceptibility genes, and more importantly pinpoint the unreported most susceptible subregions, which represent protein domains essential for gene function. R package REBET is available at https://dceg.cancer.gov/tools/analysis/rebet.