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Pathway-based factor analysis of gene expression data produces highly heritable phenotypes that associate with age

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Ana ViñuelaORCiD

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).


Abstract

© 2015 Brown et al. Statistical factor analysis methods have previously been used to remove noise components from high-dimensional data prior to genetic association mapping and, in a guided fashion, to summarize biologically relevant sources of variation. Here, we show how the derived factors summarizing pathway expression can be used to analyze the relationships between expression, heritability, and aging. We used skin gene expression data from 647 twins from the MuTHER Consortium and applied factor analysis to concisely summarize patterns of gene expression to remove broad confounding influences and to produce concise pathway-level phenotypes. We derived 930 "pathway phenotypes" that summarized patterns of variation across 186 KEGG pathways (five phenotypes per pathway). We identified 69 significant associations of age with phenotype from 57 distinct KEGG pathways at a stringent Bonferroni threshold (P<5:38×10-5). These phenotypes are more heritable (h2 = 0:32) than gene expression levels. On average, expression levels of 16% of genes within these pathways are associated with age. Several significant pathways relate to metabolizing sugars and fatty acids; others relate to insulin signaling. We have demonstrated that factor analysis methods combined with biological knowledge can produce more reliable phenotypes with less stochastic noise than the individual gene expression levels, which increases our power to discover biologically relevant associations. These phenotypes could also be applied to discover associations with other environmental factors.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Brown AA, Ding Z, Vinuela A, Glass D, Parts L, Spector T, Winn J, Durbin R

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics

Year: 2015

Volume: 5

Issue: 5

Pages: 839-847

Online publication date: 11/05/2015

Acceptance date: 05/03/2015

Date deposited: 29/06/2020

ISSN (electronic): 2160-1836

Publisher: Genetics Society of America

URL: https://doi.org/10.1534/g3.114.011411

DOI: 10.1534/g3.114.011411

PubMed id: 25758824


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Funding

Funder referenceFunder name
259749
2011060
WT098051

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