Protein-coding variants implicate novel genes related to lipid homeostasis contributing to body-fat distribution

CHD Exome+ Consortium, Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) Consortium, EPIC-CVD Consortium, ExomeBP Consortium, Global Lipids Genetics Consortium, GoT2D Genes Consortium, The InterAct consortium, ReproGen Consortium, T2D-Genes Consortium, The MAGIC Investigators, Anne E Justice, Tugce Karaderi, Heather M Highland, Kristin L Young, Mariaelisa Graff, Yingchang Lu, Valérie Turcot, Paul L Auer, Rebecca S Fine, Xiuqing GuoClaudia Schurmann, Adelheid Lempradl, Eirini Marouli, Anubha Mahajan, Thomas W Winkler, Adam E Locke, Carolina Medina-Gomez, Tõnu Esko, Sailaja Vedantam, Ayush Giri, Ken Sin Lo, Tamuno Alfred, Poorva Mudgal, Maggie C Y Ng, Nancy L Heard-Costa, Mary F Feitosa, Alisa K Manning, Sara M Willems, Suthesh Sivapalaratnam, Goncalo Abecasis, Dewan S Alam, Matthew Allison, Philippe Amouyel, Zorayr Arzumanyan, Beverley Balkau, Lisa Bastarache, Sven Bergmann, Lawrence F Bielak, Linda Broer, Rajiv Chowdhury, Amanda J Cox, Torben Hansen, John R B Perry, Alexander Teumer, André G Uitterlinden, Cornelia M van Duijn, Jing Hua Zhao, Wei Zhao, M Carola Zillikens, Fernando Rivadeneira, Kari E. North*, Cecilia M. Lindgren*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

75 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Body-fat distribution is a risk factor for adverse cardiovascular health consequences. We analyzed the association of body-fat distribution, assessed by waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index, with 228,985 predicted coding and splice site variants available on exome arrays in up to 344,369 individuals from five major ancestries (discovery) and 132,177 European-ancestry individuals (validation). We identified 15 common (minor allele frequency, MAF ≥5%) and nine low-frequency or rare (MAF <5%) coding novel variants. Pathway/gene set enrichment analyses identified lipid particle, adiponectin, abnormal white adipose tissue physiology and bone development and morphology as important contributors to fat distribution, while cross-trait associations highlight cardiometabolic traits. In functional follow-up analyses, specifically in Drosophila RNAi-knockdowns, we observed a significant increase in the total body triglyceride levels for two genes (DNAH10 and PLXND1). We implicate novel genes in fat distribution, stressing the importance of interrogating low-frequency and protein-coding variants.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)452-469
Number of pages18
JournalNature Genetics
Volume51
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Mar 2019

Research programs

  • EMC MM-01-39-02
  • EMC MM-01-39-09-A
  • EMC NIHES-01-64-02
  • EMC NIHES-03-30-02

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