Whole-exome sequencing of 2,000 Danish individuals and the role of rare coding variants in type 2 diabetes

Kirk E. Lohmueller, Thomas Hempel Sparsø, Qibin Li, Ehm Astrid Andersson Galijatovic, Thorfinn Sand Korneliussen, Anders Albrechtsen, Karina Banasik, Niels Grarup, Ingileif Hallgrimsdottir, Kristoffer Kiil, Tuomas Oskari Kilpeläinen, Nikolaj Thure Krarup, Tune Hannes Pers, Gaston Sanchez, Youna Hu, Michael DeGiorgio, Torben Jørgensen, Annelli Sandbæk, Torsten Lauritzen, Søren BrunakKarsten Kristiansen, Yingrui Li, Torben Hansen, Jun Wang, Rasmus Nielsen, Oluf Borbye Pedersen

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98 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

It has been hypothesized that, in aggregate, rare variants in coding regions of genes explain a substantial fraction of the heritability of common diseases. We sequenced the exomes of 1,000 Danish cases with common forms of type 2 diabetes (including body mass index > 27.5 kg/m(2) and hypertension) and 1,000 healthy controls to an average depth of 56×. Our simulations suggest that our study had the statistical power to detect at least one causal gene (a gene containing causal mutations) if the heritability of these common diseases was explained by rare variants in the coding regions of a limited number of genes. We applied a series of gene-based tests to detect such susceptibility genes. However, no gene showed a significant association with disease risk after we corrected for the number of genes analyzed. Thus, we could reject a model for the genetic architecture of type 2 diabetes where rare nonsynonymous variants clustered in a modest number of genes (fewer than 20) are responsible for the majority of disease risk.
Original languageEnglish
JournalAmerican Journal of Human Genetics
Volume93
Issue number6
Pages (from-to)1072-1086
Number of pages15
ISSN0002-9297
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 5 Dec 2013

Bibliographical note

Erratum: Whole-exome sequencing of 2,000 Danish individuals and the role of rare coding variants in type 2 diabetes DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2014.02.002

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