Genome-wide association meta-analysis of corneal curvature identifies novel loci and shared genetic influences across axial length and refractive error.

Corneal curvature, a highly heritable trait, is a key clinical endophenotype for myopia - a major cause of visual impairment and blindness in the world. Here we present a trans-ethnic meta-analysis of corneal curvature GWAS in 44,042 individuals of Caucasian and Asian with replication in 88,218 UK Biobank data. We identified 47 loci (of which 26 are novel), with population-specific signals as well as shared signals across ethnicities. Some identified variants showed precise scaling in corneal curvature and eye elongation (i.e. axial length) to maintain eyes in emmetropia (i.e. HDAC11/FBLN2 rs2630445, RBP3 rs11204213); others exhibited association with myopia with little pleiotropic effects on eye elongation. Implicated genes are involved in extracellular matrix organization, developmental process for body and eye, connective tissue cartilage and glycosylation protein activities. Our study provides insights into population-specific novel genes for corneal curvature, and their pleiotropic effect in regulating eye size or conferring susceptibility to myopia

161. Indicators of disease resilience from complete blood count and in vitro immunoassays data from young-healthy pigs

his study estimates heritability of complete blood count (CBC) and in vitro immunoassay traits. The traitswere measured from blood samples of young-healthy nursery animals that then survived to slaughterduring a natural polymicrobial disease challenge in the grow-to-finish stage but had variable productionperformance. Genetic correlations of CBC and immunoassay traits with performance traits collected fromgrow-to-finish pigs exposed to the challenge were also estimated, including carcass, average daily gain, andfeed intake traits. Most CBC and several immunoassay traits had heritability estimates ranging from 0.11to 0.46. Several CBC and immunoassay traits showed moderate to high positive (0.25 to 0.51) or negative(-0.92 to -0.37) genetic correlations with performance traits under disease. These results suggest that someCBC and immunoassay traits collected from young-healthy animals before exposure to disease challengeare potential indicator traits for selecting disease resilient pigs that can maintain better performance underpathogen exposure

797. Genetic relationships among immune response traits of young healthy pigs evaluated by immunoassays

This study estimates phenotypic and genetic correlations of different components of the immune system of young healthy pigs, evaluated by various immunoassays, with an aim towards revealing a deeper understanding of the immune system of pigs and the role of immunoassays in predicting disease resilience. The composition of circulating immune cells, their phagocytic activity, and immune response measured by the High Immune Response (HIR™) technology were found to be heritable. The percentages of granulocytes and neutrophils in blood had high positive phenotypic and genetic correlations with each other and with the percentage of cells that showed phagocytosis activity. The HIR tests showed antibody-mediated immune response to be positively genetically correlated with cell composition traits, while cell-mediated immune response had a positive genetic correlation with only % eosinophils. These results suggest that immunoassays conducted on young healthy pigs provide important genetic information on their immune response profiles