Generalized genetic association study with samples of related individuals. (English) Zbl 1228.62140

Feng, Zeny; Wong, William W. L.; Gao, Xin; Schenkel, Flavio

Ann. Appl. Stat. 5, No. 3, 2109-2130 (2011).

Summary: Genetic association studies are an essential step to discover genetic factors that are associated with a complex trait of interest. We present a novel generalized quasi-likelihood score (GQLS) test that is suitable for a study with either a quantitative trait or a binary trait. We use a logistic regression model to link the phenotypic value of the trait to the distribution of allelic frequencies. In our model, the allele frequencies are treated as a response and the trait is treated as a covariate that allows us to leave the distribution of the trait values unspecified. Simulation studies indicate that our method is generally more powerful in comparison with the family-based association test (FBAT) and controls the type I error at the desired levels. We apply our method to analyze data on Holstein cattle for an estimated breeding value phenotype, and to analyze data from the Collaborative Study of the Genetics of Alcoholism for alcohol dependence. The results show a good portion of significant single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and regions consistent with previous reports in the literature, and also reveal new significant SNPs and regions that are associated with the complex trait of interest.

MSC:

62P10	Applications of statistics to biology and medical sciences; meta analysis
62J12	Generalized linear models (logistic models)
62G10	Nonparametric hypothesis testing
92D10	Genetics and epigenetics
62N03	Testing in survival analysis and censored data
65C60	Computational problems in statistics (MSC2010)
62H15	Hypothesis testing in multivariate analysis

Keywords:

genetic association test; kinship-inbreeding coefficient; logistic regression; quasi-likelihood

Software:

R; CFC; KinInbcoef

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