FLICKR, MIKI YOSHIHITOTo understand the genetic underpinnings of human phenotypes, scientists can scan thousands of genomes to identify common variants among people with particular traits, an approach known as genome-wide association studies (GWASs). In a new study published today (May 16) in Nature Genetics, researchers combined data from more than 16 GWASs as well as from 23andMe’s database to discover novel gene-trait associations. But the researchers also added an extra layer of analysis, pooling 42 seemingly different traits—including diseases—to uncover phenotypes that may be causally linked.
“Our idea was to try to gather up all the traits that have been studied in large genetic studies and see if there is shared biology between these different traits that seem unrelated,” study coauthor Joseph Pickrell of the New York Genome Center in New York City told The Scientist.
“It’s a smart use of available data,” said Matthew Rockman, an evolutionary biologist at New York University who was not involved in the work. Because human data are formatted to prevent identification of individual subjects, such datasets “can be really difficult to combine in a sensible way,” he added.
To gather such data, Pickrell and his colleagues turned to publicly available, large consortium studies. They also gathered previously unpublished data gathered by the consumer genetics ...
