Genome-wide genetic homogeneity between sexes and populations for human height and body mass index

Jian Yang; Andrew Bakshi; Zhihong Zhu; Gibran Hemani; Anna A E Vinkhuyzen; Ilja M Nolte; Jana V van Vliet-Ostaptchouk; Harold Snieder; Lifelines Cohort Study; Tonu Esko; Lili Milani; Reedik Mägi; Andres Metspalu; Anders Hamsten; Patrik K E Magnusson; Nancy L Pedersen; Erik Ingelsson; Peter M Visscher

doi:10.1093/hmg/ddv443

Genome-wide genetic homogeneity between sexes and populations for human height and body mass index

Hum Mol Genet. 2015 Dec 20;24(25):7445-9. doi: 10.1093/hmg/ddv443. Epub 2015 Oct 22.

Authors

Jian Yang¹, Andrew Bakshi², Zhihong Zhu², Gibran Hemani³, Anna A E Vinkhuyzen², Ilja M Nolte⁴, Jana V van Vliet-Ostaptchouk⁵, Harold Snieder⁴; Lifelines Cohort Study; Tonu Esko⁶, Lili Milani⁷, Reedik Mägi⁷, Andres Metspalu⁸, Anders Hamsten⁹, Patrik K E Magnusson¹⁰, Nancy L Pedersen¹⁰, Erik Ingelsson¹¹, Peter M Visscher¹²

Affiliations

¹ Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia, The University of Queensland Diamantina Institute, The Translation Research Institute, Brisbane, QLD 4102, Australia, jian.yang@uq.edu.au.
² Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia.
³ Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia, MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (IEU) at the University of Bristol, School of Social and Community Medicine, Bristol BS8 1TH, UK.
⁴ Department of Epidemiology.
⁵ Department of Epidemiology, Department of Endocrinology and.
⁶ Estonian Genome Center, University of Tartu, Tartu 51006, Estonia, Division of Endocrinology, Boston Children's Hospital, Cambridge, MA 02141, USA, Program in Medical and Populational Genetics, Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA 02242, USA, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
⁷ Estonian Genome Center, University of Tartu, Tartu 51006, Estonia.
⁸ Estonian Genome Center, University of Tartu, Tartu 51006, Estonia, Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Tartu, Tartu 51010, Estonia.
⁹ Cardiovascular Genetics and Genomics Group, Atherosclerosis Research Unit, Department of Medicine Solna and.
¹⁰ Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, 17177 Stockholm, Sweden.
¹¹ Molecular Epidemiology and Science for Life Laboratory, Department of Medical Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden and Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiovascular Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
¹² Queensland Brain Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia, The University of Queensland Diamantina Institute, The Translation Research Institute, Brisbane, QLD 4102, Australia.

PMID: 26494901
DOI: 10.1093/hmg/ddv443

Abstract

Sex-specific genetic effects have been proposed to be an important source of variation for human complex traits. Here we use two distinct genome-wide methods to estimate the autosomal genetic correlation (rg) between men and women for human height and body mass index (BMI), using individual-level (n = ∼44 000) and summary-level (n = ∼133 000) data from genome-wide association studies. Results are consistent and show that the between-sex genetic correlation is not significantly different from unity for both traits. In contrast, we find evidence of genetic heterogeneity between sexes for waist-hip ratio (rg = ∼0.7) and between populations for BMI (rg = ∼0.9 between Europe and the USA) but not for height. The lack of evidence for substantial genetic heterogeneity for body size is consistent with empirical findings across traits and species.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Body Height / genetics
Body Mass Index
Genome-Wide Association Study / methods*
Humans
Models, Genetic
Waist-Hip Ratio

Grants and funding

MC_UU_12013/1/MRC_/Medical Research Council/United Kingdom