Biological Pathway-Based Genome-Wide Association Analysis Identified the Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide (VIP) Pathway Important for Obesity

Recent genome‐wide association (GWA) studies have identified a number of novel genes/variants predisposing to obesity. However, most GWA studies have focused on individual single‐nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs)/genes with a strong statistical association with a phenotypic trait without considering po...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.) Md.), 2010-12, Vol.18 (12), p.2339-2346
Main Authors: Liu, Yong‐Jun, Guo, Yan‐Fang, Zhang, Li‐Shu, Pei, Yu‐Fang, Yu, Na, Yu, Ping, Papasian, Christopher J, Deng, Hong‐Wen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adipose Tissue
Adult
Aged
Body Mass Index
Databases, Factual
European Continental Ancestry Group
Female
Genome-Wide Association Study - methods
Genotype
Humans
Male
Middle Aged
Obesity - genetics
Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide
Signal Transduction - genetics
United States
Vasoactive Intestinal Peptide - genetics
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Summary:Recent genome‐wide association (GWA) studies have identified a number of novel genes/variants predisposing to obesity. However, most GWA studies have focused on individual single‐nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs)/genes with a strong statistical association with a phenotypic trait without considering potential biological interplay of the tested genes. In this study, we performed biological pathway‐based GWA analysis for BMI and body fat mass. We used individual level genotype data generated from 1,000 unrelated US whites that were genotyped for ∼500,000 SNPs. Statistical analysis of pathways was performed using a modification of the Gene Set Enrichment Algorithm. A total of 963 pathways extracted from the BioCarta, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), Ambion GeneAssist, and Gene Ontology (GO) databases were analyzed. Among all of the pathways analyzed, the vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) pathway was most strongly associated with fat mass (nominal P = 0.0009) and was the third most strongly associated pathway with BMI (nominal P = 0.0006). After multiple testing correction, the VIP pathway achieved false‐discovery rate (FDR) q values of 0.042 and 0.120 for fat mass and BMI, respectively. Our study is the first to demonstrate that the VIP pathway may play an important role in development of obesity. The study also highlights the importance of pathway‐based GWA analysis in identification of additional genes/variants for complex human diseases.
ISSN:1930-7381
1930-739X
DOI:10.1038/oby.2010.83