 Evidence of Inbreeding Depression on Human HeightRuth McQuillan, Niina Eklund, Nicola Pirastu, Maris Kuningas, Brian P McEvoy, Tõnu Esko, Tanguy Corre, Gail Davies, Marika Kaakinen, Leo-Pekka Lyytikäinen, Kati Kristiansson, Aki S Havulinna, Martin Gögele, Veronique Vitart, Albert Tenesa, Yurii Aulchenko, Caroline Hayward, Åsa Johansson, Mladen Boban, Sheila Ulivi, Antonietta Robino, Vesna Boraska, Wilmar Igl, Sarah H Wild, Lina Zgaga, Najaf Amin, Evropi Theodoratou, Ozren Polašek, Giorgia Girotto, Lorna M Lopez, Cinzia Sala, Jari Lahti, Tiina Laatikainen, Inga Prokopenko, Mart Kals, Jorma Viikari, Jian Yang, Anneli Pouta, Karol Estrada, Albert Hofman, Nelson Freimer, Nicholas G Martin, Mika Kähönen, Lili Milani, Markku Heliövaara, Erkki Vartiainen, Katri Räikkönen, Corrado Masciullo, John M Starr, Andrew A Hicks, Laura Esposito, Ivana Kolčić, Susan M Farrington, Ben Oostra, Tatijana Zemunik, Harry Campbell, Mirna Kirin, Marina Pehlic, Flavio Faletra, David Porteous, Giorgio Pistis, Elisabeth Widén, Veikko Salomaa, Seppo Koskinen, Krista Fischer, Terho Lehtimäki, Andrew Heath, Mark I McCarthy, Fernando Rivadeneira, Grant W Montgomery, Henning Tiemeier, Anna-Liisa Hartikainen, Pamela A F Madden, Pio d'Adamo, Nicholas D Hastie, Ulf Gyllensten, Alan F Wright, Cornelia M van Duijn, Malcolm Dunlop, Igor Rudan, Paolo Gasparini, Peter P Pramstaller, Ian J Deary, Daniela Toniolo, Johan G Eriksson, Antti Jula, Olli T Raitakari, Andres Metspalu, Markus Perola, Marjo-Riitta Järvelin, André Uitterlinden, Peter M Visscher, James F Wilson and on behalf of the ROHgen Consortium PLOS Genetics, 2012, vol. 8, issue 7, 1-14 Abstract: Stature is a classical and highly heritable complex trait, with 80%–90% of variation explained by genetic factors. In recent years, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have successfully identified many common additive variants influencing human height; however, little attention has been given to the potential role of recessive genetic effects. Here, we investigated genome-wide recessive effects by an analysis of inbreeding depression on adult height in over 35,000 people from 21 different population samples. We found a highly significant inverse association between height and genome-wide homozygosity, equivalent to a height reduction of up to 3 cm in the offspring of first cousins compared with the offspring of unrelated individuals, an effect which remained after controlling for the effects of socio-economic status, an important confounder (χ2 = 83.89, df = 1; p = 5.2×10−20). There was, however, a high degree of heterogeneity among populations: whereas the direction of the effect was consistent across most population samples, the effect size differed significantly among populations. It is likely that this reflects true biological heterogeneity: whether or not an effect can be observed will depend on both the variance in homozygosity in the population and the chance inheritance of individual recessive genotypes. These results predict that multiple, rare, recessive variants influence human height. Although this exploratory work focuses on height alone, the methodology developed is generally applicable to heritable quantitative traits (QT), paving the way for an investigation into inbreeding effects, and therefore genetic architecture, on a range of QT of biomedical importance. Author Summary: Studies investigating the extent to which genetics influences human characteristics such as height have concentrated mainly on common variants of genes, where having one or two copies of a given variant influences the trait or risk of disease. This study explores whether a different type of genetic variant might also be important. We investigate the role of recessive genetic variants, where two identical copies of a variant are required to have an effect. By measuring genome-wide homozygosity—the phenomenon of inheriting two identical copies at a given point of the genome—in 35,000 individuals from 21 European populations, and by comparing this to individual height, we found that the more homozygous the genome, the shorter the individual. The offspring of first cousins (who have increased homozygosity) were predicted to be up to 3 cm shorter on average than the offspring of unrelated parents. Height is influenced by the combined effect of many recessive variants dispersed across the genome. This may also be true for other human characteristics and diseases, opening up a new way to understand how genetic variation influences our health. Date: 2012 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pgen00:1002655 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1002655 Access Statistics for this article More articles in PLOS Genetics from Public Library of Science |
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