Understanding the genetic determinants of the brain with MOSTest.

ABSTRACT: Regional brain morphology has a complex genetic architecture, consisting of many common polymorphisms with small individual effects. This has proven challenging for genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Due to the distributed nature of genetic signal across brain regions, multivariate analysis of regional measures may enhance discovery of genetic variants. Current multivariate approaches to GWAS are ill-suited for complex, large-scale data of this kind. Here, we introduce the Multivariate Omnibus Statistical Test (MOSTest), with an efficient computational design enabling rapid and reliable inference, and apply it to 171 regional brain morphology measures from 26,502 UK Biobank participants. At the conventional genome-wide significance threshold of α = 5 × 10^-8, MOSTest identif

SUBMITTER: van der Meer D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7360598 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature