35,311 research outputs found
State-dependent changes of connectivity patterns and functional brain network topology in Autism Spectrum Disorder
Anatomical and functional brain studies have converged to the hypothesis that
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are associated with atypical connectivity.
Using a modified resting-state paradigm to drive subjects' attention, we
provide evidence of a very marked interaction between ASD brain functional
connectivity and cognitive state. We show that functional connectivity changes
in opposite ways in ASD and typicals as attention shifts from external world
towards one's body generated information. Furthermore, ASD subject alter more
markedly than typicals their connectivity across cognitive states. Using
differences in brain connectivity across conditions, we classified ASD subjects
at a performance around 80% while classification based on the connectivity
patterns in any given cognitive state were close to chance. Connectivity
between the Anterior Insula and dorsal-anterior Cingulate Cortex showed the
highest classification accuracy and its strength increased with ASD severity.
These results pave the path for diagnosis of mental pathologies based on
functional brain networks obtained from a library of mental states
Integration of disease-specific single nucleotide polymorphisms, expression quantitative trait loci and coexpression networks reveal novel candidate genes for type 2 diabetes.
Aims/hypothesisWhile genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have been successful in identifying novel variants associated with various diseases, it has been much more difficult to determine the biological mechanisms underlying these associations. Expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) provide another dimension to these data by associating single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with gene expression. We hypothesised that integrating SNPs known to be associated with type 2 diabetes with eQTLs and coexpression networks would enable the discovery of novel candidate genes for type 2 diabetes.MethodsWe selected 32 SNPs associated with type 2 diabetes in two or more independent GWASs. We used previously described eQTLs mapped from genotype and gene expression data collected from 1,008 morbidly obese patients to find genes with expression associated with these SNPs. We linked these genes to coexpression modules, and ranked the other genes in these modules using an inverse sum score.ResultsWe found 62 genes with expression associated with type 2 diabetes SNPs. We validated our method by linking highly ranked genes in the coexpression modules back to SNPs through a combined eQTL dataset. We showed that the eQTLs highlighted by this method are significantly enriched for association with type 2 diabetes in data from the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium (WTCCC, p = 0.026) and the Gene Environment Association Studies (GENEVA, p = 0.042), validating our approach. Many of the highly ranked genes are also involved in the regulation or metabolism of insulin, glucose or lipids.Conclusions/interpretationWe have devised a novel method, involving the integration of datasets of different modalities, to discover novel candidate genes for type 2 diabetes
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