Author Correction: Positive selection acts on regulatory genetic variants in populations of European ancestry that affect ALDH2 gene expression.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Schaschl H
PROVIDER: S-EPMC10564712 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Author Correction: Positive selection acts on regulatory genetic variants in populations of European ancestry that affect ALDH2 gene expression.
Schaschl Helmut H Göllner Tobias T Morris David L DL
Scientific reports 20231010 1
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Project description:ALDH2 is a key enzyme in alcohol metabolism that protects cells from acetaldehyde toxicity. Using iHS, iSAFE and FST statistics, we identified regulatory acting variants affecting ALDH2 gene expression under positive selection in populations of European ancestry. Several SNPs (rs3184504, rs4766578, rs10774625, rs597808, rs653178, rs847892, rs2013002) that function as eQTLs for ALDH2 in various tissues showed evidence of strong positive selection. Very large pairwise FST values indicated high genetic differentiation at these loci between populations of European ancestry and populations of other global ancestries. Estimating the timing of positive selection on the beneficial alleles suggests that these variants were recently adapted approximately 3000-3700 years ago. The derived beneficial alleles are in complete linkage disequilibrium with the derived ALDH2 promoter variant rs886205, which is associated with higher transcriptional activity. The SNPs rs4766578 and rs847892 are located in binding sequences for the transcription factor HNF4A, which is an important regulatory element of ALDH2 gene expression. In contrast to the missense variant ALDH2 rs671 (ALDH2*2), which is common only in East Asian populations and is associated with greatly reduced enzyme activity and alcohol intolerance, the beneficial alleles of the regulatory variants identified in this study are associated with increased expression of ALDH2. This suggests adaptation of Europeans to higher alcohol consumption.
| S-EPMC8927298 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Variants within the gene cluster encoding ?3, ?5, and ?4 nicotinic receptor subunits are major risk factors for substance dependence. The strongest impact on risk is associated with variation in the CHRNA5 gene, where at least two mechanisms are at work: amino acid variation and altered mRNA expression levels. The risk allele of the non-synonymous variant (rs16969968; D398N) primarily occurs on the haplotype containing the low mRNA expression allele. In populations of European ancestry, there are approximately 50 highly correlated variants in the CHRNA5-CHRNA3-CHRNB4 gene cluster and the adjacent PSMA4 gene region that are associated with CHRNA5 mRNA levels. It is not clear which of these variants contribute to the changes in CHRNA5 transcript level. Because populations of African ancestry have reduced linkage disequilibrium among variants spanning this gene cluster, eQTL mapping in subjects of African ancestry could potentially aid in defining the functional variants that affect CHRNA5 mRNA levels. We performed quantitative allele specific gene expression using frontal cortices derived from 49 subjects of African ancestry and 111 subjects of European ancestry. This method measures allele-specific transcript levels in the same individual, which eliminates other biological variation that occurs when comparing expression levels between different samples. This analysis confirmed that substance dependence associated variants have a direct cis-regulatory effect on CHRNA5 transcript levels in human frontal cortices of African and European ancestry and identified 10 highly correlated variants, located in a 9 kb region, that are potential functional variants modifying CHRNA5 mRNA expression levels.
| S-EPMC3841173 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Forkhead box P2 (FOXP2) is a highly conserved transcription factor that has been implicated in human speech and language disorders and plays important roles in the plasticity of the developing brain. The pattern of nucleotide polymorphisms in FOXP2 in modern populations suggests that it has been the target of positive (Darwinian) selection during recent human evolution. In our study, we searched for evidence of selection that might have followed FOXP2 adaptations in modern humans. We examined whether or not putative FOXP2 targets identified by chromatin-immunoprecipitation genomic screening show evidence of positive selection. We developed an algorithm that, for any given gene list, systematically generates matched lists of control genes from the Ensembl database, collates summary statistics for three frequency-spectrum-based neutrality tests from the low-coverage resequencing data of the 1000 Genomes Project, and determines whether these statistics are significantly different between the given gene targets and the set of controls. Overall, there was strong evidence of selection of FOXP2 targets in Europeans, but not in the Han Chinese, Japanese, or Yoruba populations. Significant outliers included several genes linked to cellular movement, reproduction, development, and immune cell trafficking, and 13 of these constituted a significant network associated with cardiac arteriopathy. Strong signals of selection were observed for CNTNAP2 and RBFOX1, key neurally expressed genes that have been consistently identified as direct FOXP2 targets in multiple studies and that have themselves been associated with neurodevelopmental disorders involving language dysfunction.
| S-EPMC3644635 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Analyzing genetic variation of human populations for detecting loci that have been affected by positive natural selection is important for understanding adaptive history and phenotypic variation in humans. In this study, we analyzed recent positive selection in Northern Europe from genome-wide data sets of 250 000 and 500 000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a total of 999 individuals from Great Britain, Northern Germany, Eastern and Western Finland, and Sweden. Coalescent simulations were used for demonstrating that the integrated haplotype score (iHS) and long-range haplotype (LRH) statistics have sufficient power in genome-wide data sets of different sample sizes and SNP densities. Furthermore, the behavior of the F(ST) statistic in closely related populations was characterized by allele frequency simulations. In the analysis of the North European data set, 60 regions in the genome showed strong signs of recent positive selection. Out of these, 21 regions have not been discovered in previous scans, and many contain genes with interesting functions (eg, RAB38, INFG, NOS1AP, and APOE). In the putatively selected regions, we observed a statistically significant overrepresentation of genetic association with complex disease, which emphasizes the importance of the analysis of positive selection in understanding the evolution of human disease. Altogether, this study demonstrates the potential of genome-wide data sets to discover loci that lie behind evolutionary adaptation in different human populations.
| S-EPMC2987258 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundCurrently, there is very limited knowledge about the genes involved in normal pigmentation variation in East Asian populations. We carried out a genome-wide scan of signatures of positive selection using the 1000 Genomes Phase I dataset, in order to identify pigmentation genes showing putative signatures of selective sweeps in East Asia. We applied a broad range of methods to detect signatures of selection including: 1) Tests designed to identify deviations of the Site Frequency Spectrum (SFS) from neutral expectations (Tajima's D, Fay and Wu's H and Fu and Li's D* and F*), 2) Tests focused on the identification of high-frequency haplotypes with extended linkage disequilibrium (iHS and Rsb) and 3) Tests based on genetic differentiation between populations (LSBL). Based on the results obtained from a genome wide analysis of 25 kb windows, we constructed an empirical distribution for each statistic across all windows, and identified pigmentation genes that are outliers in the distribution.ResultsOur tests identified twenty genes that are relevant for pigmentation biology. Of these, eight genes (ATRN, EDAR, KLHL7, MITF, OCA2, TH, TMEM33 and TRPM1,) were extreme outliers (top 0.1% of the empirical distribution) for at least one statistic, and twelve genes (ADAM17, BNC2, CTSD, DCT, EGFR, LYST, MC1R, MLPH, OPRM1, PDIA6, PMEL (SILV) and TYRP1) were in the top 1% of the empirical distribution for at least one statistic. Additionally, eight of these genes (BNC2, EGFR, LYST, MC1R, OCA2, OPRM1, PMEL (SILV) and TYRP1) have been associated with pigmentary traits in association studies.ConclusionsWe identified a number of putative pigmentation genes showing extremely unusual patterns of genetic variation in East Asia. Most of these genes are outliers for different tests and/or different populations, and have already been described in previous scans for positive selection, providing strong support to the hypothesis that recent selective sweeps left a signature in these regions. However, it will be necessary to carry out association and functional studies to demonstrate the implication of these genes in normal pigmentation variation.
| S-EPMC3727976 | biostudies-literature
Project description:An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
| S-EPMC7188886 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC11549382 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Background/objectivesCentral adiposity measures such as waist circumference (WC) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) are associated with cardiometabolic disorders independently of body mass index (BMI) and are gaining clinically utility. Several studies report genetic variants associated with central adiposity, but most utilize only European ancestry populations. Understanding whether the genetic associations discovered among mainly European descendants are shared with African ancestry populations will help elucidate the biological underpinnings of abdominal fat deposition.Subjects/methodsTo identify the underlying functional genetic determinants of body fat distribution, we conducted an array-wide association meta-analysis among persons of African ancestry across seven studies/consortia participating in the Population Architecture using Genomics and Epidemiology (PAGE) consortium. We used the Metabochip array, designed for fine-mapping cardiovascular-associated loci, to explore novel array-wide associations with WC and WHR among 15 945 African descendants using all and sex-stratified groups. We further interrogated 17 known WHR regions for African ancestry-specific variants.ResultsOf the 17 WHR loci, eight single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) located in four loci were replicated in the sex-combined or sex-stratified meta-analyses. Two of these eight independently associated with WHR after conditioning on the known variant in European descendants (rs12096179 in TBX15-WARS2 and rs2059092 in ADAMTS9). In the fine-mapping assessment, the putative functional region was reduced across all four loci but to varying degrees (average 40% drop in number of putative SNPs and 20% drop in genomic region). Similar to previous studies, the significant SNPs in the female-stratified analysis were stronger than the significant SNPs from the sex-combined analysis. No novel associations were detected in the array-wide analyses.ConclusionsOf 17 previously identified loci, four loci replicated in the African ancestry populations of this study. Utilizing different linkage disequilibrium patterns observed between European and African ancestries, we narrowed the suggestive region containing causative variants for all four loci.
| S-EPMC5296276 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC10541400 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC10290065 | biostudies-literature