Disentangling molecular relationships with a causal inference test.

ABSTRACT:

Background

There has been intense effort over the past couple of decades to identify loci underlying quantitative traits as a key step in the process of elucidating the etiology of complex diseases. Recently there has been some effort to coalesce non-biased high-throughput data, e.g. high density genotyping and genome wide RNA expression, to drive understanding of the molecular basis of disease. However, a stumbling block has been the difficult question of how to leverage this information to identify molecular mechanisms that explain quantitative trait loci (QTL). We have developed a formal statistical hypothesis test, resulting in a p-value, to quantify uncertainty in a causal inference pertaining to a measured factor, e.g. a molecular species, which potentially mediates a known c

SUBMITTER: Millstein J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3224661 | biostudies-literature | 2009 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature