Exploiting the mediating role of the metabolome to unravel transcript-to-phenotype associations.

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State: Public
Version: Final published version
License: CC BY 4.0
Serval ID
serval:BIB_33296666D7F5
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Exploiting the mediating role of the metabolome to unravel transcript-to-phenotype associations.
Journal
eLife
Author(s)
Auwerx C., Sadler M.C., Woh T., Reymond A., Kutalik Z., Porcu E.
ISSN
2050-084X (Electronic)
ISSN-L
2050-084X
Publication state
Published
Issued date
09/03/2023
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
12
Pages
e81097
Language
english
Notes
Publication types: Journal Article ; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Publication Status: epublish
Abstract
Despite the success of genome-wide association studies (GWASs) in identifying genetic variants associated with complex traits, understanding the mechanisms behind these statistical associations remains challenging. Several methods that integrate methylation, gene expression, and protein quantitative trait loci (QTLs) with GWAS data to determine their causal role in the path from genotype to phenotype have been proposed. Here, we developed and applied a multi-omics Mendelian randomization (MR) framework to study how metabolites mediate the effect of gene expression on complex traits. We identified 216 transcript-metabolite-trait causal triplets involving 26 medically relevant phenotypes. Among these associations, 58% were missed by classical transcriptome-wide MR, which only uses gene expression and GWAS data. This allowed the identification of biologically relevant pathways, such as between ANKH and calcium levels mediated by citrate levels and SLC6A12 and serum creatinine through modulation of the levels of the renal osmolyte betaine. We show that the signals missed by transcriptome-wide MR are found, thanks to the increase in power conferred by integrating multiple omics layer. Simulation analyses show that with larger molecular QTL studies and in case of mediated effects, our multi-omics MR framework outperforms classical MR approaches designed to detect causal relationships between single molecular traits and complex phenotypes.
Keywords
Genome-Wide Association Study/methods, Phenotype, Quantitative Trait Loci, Metabolome, Transcriptome, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Mediation, Mendelian Randomization, gene expression, genetics, genomics, human, metabolomics
Pubmed
Web of science
Open Access
Yes
Create date
16/03/2023 10:10
Last modification date
06/04/2023 6:53
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