Population-specific causal disease effect sizes in functionally important regions impacted by selection

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Author(s)

Author Name

Huwenbo Shi

Published 1 Project

Genetics

Steven Gazal

Published 1 Project

Genetics

Masahiro Kanai

Published 1 Project

Genetics

Evan M. Koch

Published 1 Project

Genetics

Armin P. Schoech

Published 1 Project

Genetics

Katherine M. Siewert

Published 1 Project

Genetics

Samuel S. Kim

Published 1 Project

Genetics

Yang Luo

Published 2 Projects

Immunology Genetics

Tiffany Amariuta

Published 1 Project

Genetics

Yukinori Okada

Published 2 Projects

Genetics Genetic And Genomic Medicine

Shamil R. Sunyaev

Published 2 Projects

Genetics

Alkes L. Price

Published 3 Projects

genomics Genetics

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Many diseases and complex traits exhibit population-specific causal effect sizes with trans-ethnic genetic correlations significantly less than 1, limiting trans-ethnic polygenic risk prediction. We developed a new method, S-LDXR, for stratifying squared trans-ethnic genetic correlation across genomic annotations, and applied S-LDXR to genome-wide association summary statistics for 31 diseases and complex traits in East Asians (EAS) and Europeans (EUR) (average N EAS=90K, N EUR=267K) with an average trans-ethnic genetic correlation of 0.85 (s.e. 0.01). We determined that squared trans-ethnic genetic correlation was 0.82× (s.e. 0.01) smaller than the genome-wide average at SNPs in the top quintile of background selection statistic, implying more population-specific causal effect sizes. Accordingly, causal effect sizes were more population-specific in functionally important regions, including conserved and regulatory regions. In analyses of regions surrounding specifically expressed genes, causal effect sizes were most population-specific for skin and immune genes and least population-specific for brain genes. Our results could potentially be explained by stronger gene-environment interaction at loci impacted by selection, particularly positive selection. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

Genetics
Genetics 59 Projects