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Genome-wide association study of offspring birth weight in 86 577 women identifies five novel loci and highlights maternal genetic effects that are independent of fetal genetics.

Robin N Beaumont | Nicole M Warrington | Alana Cavadino | Jessica Tyrrell | Michael Nodzenski | Momoko Horikoshi | Frank Geller | Ronny Myhre | Rebecca C Richmond | Lavinia Paternoster | Jonathan P Bradfield | Eskil Kreiner-Møller | Ville Huikari | Sarah Metrustry | Kathryn L Lunetta | Jodie N Painter | Jouke-Jan Hottenga | Catherine Allard | Sheila J Barton | Ana Espinosa | Julie A Marsh | Catherine Potter | Ge Zhang | Wei Ang | Diane J Berry | Luigi Bouchard | Shikta Das | Early Growth Genetics (EGG) Consortium | Hakon Hakonarson | Jani Heikkinen | Øyvind Helgeland | Berthold Hocher | Albert Hofman | Hazel M Inskip | Samuel E Jones | Manolis Kogevinas | Penelope A Lind | Letizia Marullo | Sarah E Medland | Anna Murray | Jeffrey C Murray | Pål R Njølstad | Ellen A Nohr | Christoph Reichetzeder | Susan M Ring | Katherine S Ruth | Loreto Santa-Marina | Denise M Scholtens | Sylvain Sebert | Verena Sengpiel | Marcus A Tuke | Marc Vaudel | Michael N Weedon | Gonneke Willemsen | Andrew R Wood | Hanieh Yaghootkar | Louis J Muglia | Meike Bartels | Caroline L Relton | Craig E Pennell | Leda Chatzi | Xavier Estivill | John W Holloway | Dorret I Boomsma | Grant W Montgomery | Joanne M Murabito | Tim D Spector | Christine Power | Marjo-Ritta Järvelin | Hans Bisgaard | Struan F A Grant | Thorkild I A Sørensen | Vincent W Jaddoe | Bo Jacobsson | Mads Melbye | Mark I McCarthy | Andrew T Hattersley | M Geoffrey Hayes | Timothy M Frayling | Marie-France Hivert | Janine F Felix | Elina Hyppönen | William L Lowe | David M Evans | Debbie A Lawlor | Bjarke Feenstra | Rachel M Freathy
Human molecular genetics | 2018

Genome-wide association studies of birth weight have focused on fetal genetics, whereas relatively little is known about the role of maternal genetic variation. We aimed to identify maternal genetic variants associated with birth weight that could highlight potentially relevant maternal determinants of fetal growth. We meta-analysed data on up to 8.7 million SNPs in up to 86 577 women of European descent from the Early Growth Genetics (EGG) Consortium and the UK Biobank. We used structural equation modelling (SEM) and analyses of mother-child pairs to quantify the separate maternal and fetal genetic effects. Maternal SNPs at 10 loci (MTNR1B, HMGA2, SH2B3, KCNAB1, L3MBTL3, GCK, EBF1, TCF7L2, ACTL9, CYP3A7) were associated with offspring birth weight at P < 5 × 10-8. In SEM analyses, at least 7 of the 10 associations were consistent with effects of the maternal genotype acting via the intrauterine environment, rather than via effects of shared alleles with the fetus. Variants, or correlated proxies, at many of the loci had been previously associated with adult traits, including fasting glucose (MTNR1B, GCK and TCF7L2) and sex hormone levels (CYP3A7), and one (EBF1) with gestational duration. The identified associations indicate that genetic effects on maternal glucose, cytochrome P450 activity and gestational duration, and potentially on maternal blood pressure and immune function, are relevant for fetal growth. Further characterization of these associations in mechanistic and causal analyses will enhance understanding of the potentially modifiable maternal determinants of fetal growth, with the goal of reducing the morbidity and mortality associated with low and high birth weights.

Pubmed ID: 29309628 RIS Download

Associated grants

  • Agency: Medical Research Council, United Kingdom
    Id: MR/M005070/1
  • Agency: Department of Health, United Kingdom
    Id: PHCS/C4/4/016
  • Agency: Medical Research Council, United Kingdom
    Id: MR/N01104X/2
  • Agency: European Research Council, International
    Id: 648916
  • Agency: Medical Research Council, United Kingdom
    Id: G1001799
  • Agency: Wellcome Trust, United Kingdom
    Id: 104150
  • Agency: British Heart Foundation, United Kingdom
    Id: PG/09/023/26806
  • Agency: Medical Research Council, United Kingdom
    Id: MR/N01104X/1
  • Agency: NIEHS NIH HHS, United States
    Id: P30 ES013508
  • Agency: NIA NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 AG029451
  • Agency: Medical Research Council, United Kingdom
    Id: MC_UU_12013/5
  • Agency: NIDDK NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 DK103246
  • Agency: Medical Research Council, United Kingdom
    Id: G0601653
  • Agency: Wellcome Trust, United Kingdom
  • Agency: Medical Research Council, United Kingdom
    Id: MC_UU_12013/4
  • Agency: Medical Research Council, United Kingdom
    Id: MC_UU_12011/4
  • Agency: Medical Research Council, United Kingdom
    Id: MC_QA137853
  • Agency: NIDDK NIH HHS, United States
    Id: R01 DK077659
  • Agency: British Heart Foundation, United Kingdom
    Id: RG/15/17/31749
  • Agency: Medical Research Council, United Kingdom
    Id: MC_UU_12013/2

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This is a list of tools and resources that we have found mentioned in this publication.


PLINK (tool)

RRID:SCR_001757

Open source whole genome association analysis toolset, designed to perform range of basic, large scale analyses in computationally efficient manner. Used for analysis of genotype/phenotype data. Through integration with gPLINK and Haploview, there is some support for subsequent visualization, annotation and storage of results. PLINK 1.9 is improved and second generation of the software.

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METAL (tool)

RRID:SCR_002013

Software application designed to facilitate meta-analysis of large datasets (such as several whole genome scans) in a convenient, rapid and memory efficient manner. (entry from Genetic Analysis Software)

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RRID:SCR_003199

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RRID:SCR_003422

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Reactome (tool)

RRID:SCR_003485

Collection of pathways and pathway annotations. The core unit of the Reactome data model is the reaction. Entities (nucleic acids, proteins, complexes and small molecules) participating in reactions form a network of biological interactions and are grouped into pathways (signaling, innate and acquired immune function, transcriptional regulation, translation, apoptosis and classical intermediary metabolism) . Provides website to navigate pathway knowledge and a suite of data analysis tools to support the pathway-based analysis of complex experimental and computational data sets.

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SIMBioMS (tool)

RRID:SCR_005745

SIMBioMS (System for Information Management in BioMedical Studies) is a multi-module solution for data management in biomedical studies. Any research concerning human samples and/or utilizing high-throughput technologies yields such amount of information that conventional data storage solution might not be sufficient. We offer here three software modules: * Sample Information Management System (SIMS), * Assay Information Management System (AIMS) * Sample avAILability system (SAIL) * Emanta Administration tool (Emanta) All three software modules were developed as a part of the integrated EU project MolPAGE (Molecular Phenotyping to Accelerate Genomic Epidemiology) and the collaborative research project ENGAGE (European Network of Genomic and Genetic Epidemiology). SIMS and AIMS can work either as united system or as two completely independent components. In turn, SAIL is an independent web-based system for indexing of phenotypes availability in different cohorts and collections. All systems are packaged in such a way that they can easily be installed either as local (e.g. on a laptop) or as centralized databases (to be used by a group of people). SIMS and AIMS benefit from customizable interface, editable vocabularies and a choice of options for tackling data confidentiality issues. The systems provides a user with efficient means of control over data exchange process and at the same time helps to format the metadata in compliance with the standards accepted in functional genomics. Since SIMBioMS is an open source project, source files can be downloaded and changed by the user if needed.

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HaploReg (tool)

RRID:SCR_006796

HaploReg is a tool for exploring annotations of the noncoding genome at variants on haplotype blocks, such as candidate regulatory SNPs at disease-associated loci. Using linkage disequilibrium (LD) information from the 1000 Genomes Project, linked SNPs and small indels can be visualized along with their predicted chromatin state in nine cell types, conservation across mammals, and their effect on regulatory motifs. HaploReg is designed for researchers developing mechanistic hypotheses of the impact of non-coding variants on clinical phenotypes and normal variation.

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1000 Genomes Project and AWS (tool)

RRID:SCR_008801

A dataset containing the full genomic sequence of 1,700 individuals, freely available for research use. The 1000 Genomes Project is an international research effort coordinated by a consortium of 75 companies and organizations to establish the most detailed catalogue of human genetic variation. The project has grown to 200 terabytes of genomic data including DNA sequenced from more than 1,700 individuals that researchers can now access on AWS for use in disease research free of charge. The dataset containing the full genomic sequence of 1,700 individuals is now available to all via Amazon S3. The data can be found at: http://s3.amazonaws.com/1000genomes The 1000 Genomes Project aims to include the genomes of more than 2,662 individuals from 26 populations around the world, and the NIH will continue to add the remaining genome samples to the data collection this year. Public Data Sets on AWS provide a centralized repository of public data hosted on Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). The data can be seamlessly accessed from AWS services such Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR), which provide organizations with the highly scalable compute resources needed to take advantage of these large data collections. AWS is storing the public data sets at no charge to the community. Researchers pay only for the additional AWS resources they need for further processing or analysis of the data. All 200 TB of the latest 1000 Genomes Project data is available in a publicly available Amazon S3 bucket. You can access the data via simple HTTP requests, or take advantage of the AWS SDKs in languages such as Ruby, Java, Python, .NET and PHP. Researchers can use the Amazon EC2 utility computing service to dive into this data without the usual capital investment required to work with data at this scale. AWS also provides a number of orchestration and automation services to help teams make their research available to others to remix and reuse. Making the data available via a bucket in Amazon S3 also means that customers can crunch the information using Hadoop via Amazon Elastic MapReduce, and take advantage of the growing collection of tools for running bioinformatics job flows, such as CloudBurst and Crossbow.

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KEGG (tool)

RRID:SCR_012773

Integrated database resource consisting of 16 main databases, broadly categorized into systems information, genomic information, and chemical information. In particular, gene catalogs in completely sequenced genomes are linked to higher-level systemic functions of cell, organism, and ecosystem. Analysis tools are also available. KEGG may be used as reference knowledge base for biological interpretation of large-scale datasets generated by sequencing and other high-throughput experimental technologies.

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RRID:SCR_013706

THIS RESOURCE IS NO LONGER IN SERVICE. Documented on June 6,2023. A European Medical Sequencing Consortium committed to gaining insights into the human genome and its role in health and medicine by sharing data, experience and expertise in high-throughput sequencing.

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RRID:SCR_015893

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RRID:SCR_004869

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