Genetic Variation in the Inflammation and Innate Immunity Pathways and Colorectal Cancer Risk

It is widely accepted that chronic inflammation plays a role in the etiology of colorectal cancer. Using a two-stage design, we examined the associations between colorectal cancer and common variation in 37 key genes in the inflammation and innate immunity pathways

Association of Genetic Variants and Incident Coronary Heart Disease in Multiethnic Cohorts: The PAGE Study

Genome wide association studies identified several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with prevalent coronary heart disease (CHD) but less is known of associations with incident CHD. The association of thirteen published CHD SNPs was examined in five ancestry groups of four large US prospective cohorts

Linkage to chromosome 2q32.2-q33.3 in familial serrated neoplasia (Jass syndrome)

Causative genetic variants have to date been identified for only a small proportion of familial colorectal cancer (CRC). While conditions such as Familial Adenomatous Polyposis and Lynch syndrome have well defined genetic causes, the search for variants underlying the remainder of familial CRC is plagued by genetic heterogeneity. The recent identification of families with a heritable predisposition to malignancies arising through the serrated pathway (familial serrated neoplasia or Jass syndrome) provides an opportunity to study a subset of familial CRC in which heterogeneity may be greatly reduced. A genome-wide linkage screen was performed on a large family displaying a dominantly-inherited predisposition to serrated neoplasia genotyped using the Affymetrix GeneChip Human Mapping 10 K SNP Array. Parametric and nonparametric analyses were performed and resulting regions of interest, as well as previously reported CRC susceptibility loci at 3q22, 7q31 and 9q22, were followed up by finemapping in 10 serrated neoplasia families. Genome-wide linkage analysis revealed regions of interest at 2p25.2-p25.1, 2q24.3-q37.1 and 8p21.2-q12.1. Finemapping linkage and haplotype analyses identified 2q32.2-q33.3 as the region most likely to harbour linkage, with heterogeneity logarithm of the odds (HLOD) 2.09 and nonparametric linkage (NPL) score 2.36 (P = 0.004). Five primary candidate genes (CFLAR, CASP10, CASP8, FZD7 and BMPR2) were sequenced and no segregating variants identified. There was no evidence of linkage to previously reported loci on chromosomes 3, 7 and 9

Novel Common Genetic Susceptibility Loci for Colorectal Cancer

BACKGROUND: Previous genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified 42 loci (P < 5 × 10-8) associated with risk of colorectal cancer (CRC). Expanded consortium efforts facilitating the discovery of additional susceptibility loci may capture unexplained familial risk. METHODS: We conducted a GWAS in European descent CRC cases and control subjects using a discovery-replication design, followed by examination of novel findings in a multiethnic sample (cumulative n = 163 315). In the discovery stage (36 948 case subjects/30 864 control subjects), we identified genetic variants with a minor allele frequency of 1% or greater associated with risk of CRC using logistic regression followed by a fixed-effects inverse variance weighted meta-analysis. All novel independent variants reaching genome-wide statistical significance (two-sided P < 5 × 10-8) were tested for replication in separate European ancestry samples (12 952 case subjects/48 383 control subjects). Next, we examined the generalizability of discovered variants in East Asians, African Americans, and Hispanics (12 085 case subjects/22 083 control subjects). Finally, we examined the contributions of novel risk variants to familial relative risk and examined the prediction capabilities of a polygenic risk score. All statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS: The discovery GWAS identified 11 variants associated with CRC at P < 5 × 10-8, of which nine (at 4q22.2/5p15.33/5p13.1/6p21.31/6p12.1/10q11.23/12q24.21/16q24.1/20q13.13) independently replicated at a P value of less than .05. Multiethnic follow-up supported the generalizability of discovery findings. These results demonstrated a 14.7% increase in familial relative risk explained by common risk alleles from 10.3% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 7.9% to 13.7%; known variants) to 11.9% (95% CI = 9.2% to 15.5%; known and novel variants). A polygenic risk score identified 4.3% of the population at an odds ratio for developing CRC of at least 2.0. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides insight into the architecture of common genetic variation contributing to CRC etiology and improves risk prediction for individualized screenin

Perspectives of protein evolution regarding population dynamics and marginal stability.

There are several characteristics proteins exhibit in biological organisms. Examples of these are the non-uniform distribution of structures, marginal stability, and taking advantage of gene duplication to search for novel functions. Conventional explanations have these properties arising due to functional constraints. Since proteins are under a variety of different fitness constraints, the mechanisms by which they arrive at these similar characteristics are both puzzling and poorly understood. Instead of using a variety of scenarios to explain the behavior of each different protein, we use simple protein evolution models to try and find underlying themes that explain the characteristics of the majority of biological proteins. Using these models and the concept of designability (the fraction of all sequences that could successfully fold into any particular structure), we find that the non-uniform distribution of protein structures found in nature can be explained by the interplay of evolution and population dynamics with the designability distribution. We predict that highly designable structures should be more common. We also find that marginal stability is an inherent property of proteins due to the high dimensionality of the sequence space without regard to protein function. In this way, marginal stability can result from non-adaptive evolution. If we allow protein sub-populations with different stability requirements for functionality to compete, we find that marginally stable populations of proteins tend to dominate. Finally we show that if a functional, duplicated gene produces marginally stable proteins, the original structure is conserved longer that one would expect under conditions of neutral evolution. The data suggests a reason for the low ratio of pseudogenes in multigene families. It also suggests a reason for lower than expected ratios of non-synonymous to synonymous substitutions in pseudogenes.Ph.D.Biological SciencesBiophysicsGeneticsMolecular biologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/124135/2/3001058.pd

Genetic Variation in the Inflammation and Innate Immunity Pathways and Colorectal Cancer Risk

BACKGROUND: It is widely accepted that chronic inflammation plays a role in the etiology of colorectal cancer. Using a two-stage design, we examined the associations between colorectal cancer and common variation in 37 key genes in the inflammation and innate immunity pathways. METHODS: In the discovery stage, 2,322 discordant sibships (2,535 cases, 3,915 sibling controls) from the Colorectal Cancer Family Registry were genotyped for over 600 tagSNPs and 99 SNPs were selected for further examination based on strength of association. In the second stage, 351 SNPs tagging gene regions covered by the 99 SNPs were tested in 4,783 Multiethnic Cohort subjects (2,153 cases, 2,630 controls). RESULTS: The association between rs9858822 in the PPARG gene and colorectal cancer was statistically significant at the end of the second stage (odds ratio per allele = 1.36, Bonferroni-adjusted P = 0.045), based on the “effective” number of markers in Stage 2 (n = 306). The risk allele C was common (frequency 0.3) in African Americans but rare (frequency < 0.03) in whites, Japanese Americans, Latinos and Native Hawaiians. No statistically significant heterogeneity of effects across race/ethnicity, BMI levels, regular aspirin use or pack-years of smoking was detected for this SNP. Suggestive associations were also observed for several SNPs in close vicinity to rs9858822. CONCLUSIONS: Our results provide new evidence of association between PPARG variants and colorectal cancer risk. IMPACT: Further replication in independent samples is warranted