RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Comparative architectures of direct and social genetic effects from the genome-wide association study of 170 phenotypes in laboratory mice
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 302349
DO 10.1101/302349
A1 Amelie Baud
A1 Francesco Paolo Casale
A1 Jerome Nicod
A1 Oliver Stegle
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/02/26/302349.abstract
AB Genetics can be defined as the study of how an individual’s genotype influences their phenotype (“direct genetic effects”, DGE). However, an even broader view can also account for the influence of the genotype of environmental factors such as family members and other social partners (“social genetic effects”, SGE). SGE in aggregate across the genome contribute to variation in many phenotypes, in many species(1–6). The goal of this study was to better understand how SGE arise from individual genetic loci. We focused on SGE arising between outbred laboratory mice sharing a cage and carried out the genome-wide association study of SGE and DGE for 170 phenotypes collected in 1,812 mice. We identified 24 and 120 genome-wide significant loci for SGE and DGE respectively (FDR < 10%). We found no overlap between genome-wide significant SGE and DGE loci acting on the same phenotype, which is consistent with our estimation of moderate correlations between SGE and DGE genome-wide. While eleven genome-wide significant DGE associations explained more than 5% of phenotypic variance, SGE associations explained no more than 2.5%. At five SGE loci we identified a single candidate gene and showed how individual SGE loci may help identify traits of social partners that mediate social effects. Our results demonstrate that sgeGWAS has the potential to identify novel genetic loci contributing to inter-individual differences. They also illustrate how SGE loci may yield insights into the mechanisms of social influence. Finally, our comparative description of the architectures of SGE and DGE, together with the methods we have developed, will help design and analyse future sgeGWAS.