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. 2022 Feb 19;23(1):148.
doi: 10.1186/s12864-022-08356-4.

Rare coding variants in RCN3 are associated with blood pressure

Karen Y He  1 Tanika N Kelly  2 Heming Wang  3   4   5 Jingjing Liang  1 Luke Zhu  6 Brian E Cade  3   4   5 Themistocles L Assimes  7 Lewis C Becker  8 Amber L Beitelshees  9 Lawrence F Bielak  10 Adam P Bress  11 Jennifer A Brody  12 Yen-Pei Christy Chang  9 Yi-Cheng Chang  13   14   15 Paul S de Vries  16 Ravindranath Duggirala  17 Ervin R Fox  18 Nora Franceschini  19 Anna L Furniss  20 Yan Gao  21 Xiuqing Guo  22 Jeffrey Haessler  23 Yi-Jen Hung  24 Shih-Jen Hwang  25   26 Marguerite Ryan Irvin  27 Rita R Kalyani  28 Ching-Ti Liu  25   26 Chunyu Liu  25   26 Lisa Warsinger Martin  29 May E Montasser  9 Paul M Muntner  27 Stanford Mwasongwe  30 Take Naseri  31 Walter Palmas  32 Muagututi'a Sefuiva Reupena  33 Kenneth M Rice  34 Wayne H-H Sheu  35 Daichi Shimbo  32 Jennifer A Smith  10   36 Beverly M Snively  37 Lisa R Yanek  38 Wei Zhao  10 John Blangero  17 Eric Boerwinkle  16   39 Yii-Der Ida Chen  22   40 Adolfo Correa  20 L Adrienne Cupples  25   26 Joanne E Curran  17 Myriam Fornage  16   41 Jiang He  2 Lifang Hou  42 Robert C Kaplan  43 Sharon L R Kardia  10 Eimear E Kenny  44 Charles Kooperberg  23 Donald Lloyd-Jones  43 Ruth J F Loos  45 Rasika A Mathias  46 Stephen T McGarvey  47   48 Braxton D Mitchell  9   49 Kari E North  19   50 Patricia A Peyser  10 Bruce M Psaty  51 Laura M Raffield  50 D C Rao  52 Susan Redline  3   5 Alex P Reiner  53 Stephen S Rich  54 Jerome I Rotter  22 Kent D Taylor  22 Russell Tracy  55   56 Ramachandran S Vasan  26   57 Samoan Obesity, Lifestyle and Genetic Adaptations Study (OLaGA) Group, NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) ConsortiumAlanna C Morrison  16 Daniel Levy  26   58 Aravinda Chakravarti  6 Donna K Arnett  59 Xiaofeng Zhu  60
Affiliations

Rare coding variants in RCN3 are associated with blood pressure

Karen Y He et al. BMC Genomics. .

Abstract

Background: While large genome-wide association studies have identified nearly one thousand loci associated with variation in blood pressure, rare variant identification is still a challenge. In family-based cohorts, genome-wide linkage scans have been successful in identifying rare genetic variants for blood pressure. This study aims to identify low frequency and rare genetic variants within previously reported linkage regions on chromosomes 1 and 19 in African American families from the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program. Genetic association analyses weighted by linkage evidence were completed with whole genome sequencing data within and across TOPMed ancestral groups consisting of 60,388 individuals of European, African, East Asian, Hispanic, and Samoan ancestries.

Results: Associations of low frequency and rare variants in RCN3 and multiple other genes were observed for blood pressure traits in TOPMed samples. The association of low frequency and rare coding variants in RCN3 was further replicated in UK Biobank samples (N = 403,522), and reached genome-wide significance for diastolic blood pressure (p = 2.01 × 10- 7).

Conclusions: Low frequency and rare variants in RCN3 contributes blood pressure variation. This study demonstrates that focusing association analyses in linkage regions greatly reduces multiple-testing burden and improves power to identify novel rare variants associated with blood pressure traits.

Keywords: Blood pressure; Rare variant analysis; Whole genome sequencing.

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Conflict of interest statement

Karen Y. He is currently an employee of The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson. This publication does not represent the views of her employer. Adam P. Bress receives research support to his institution from Novartis, Amgen, and Amarin. Bruce M. Psaty serves on the Steering Committee of the Yale Open Data Access Project funded by Johnson & Johnson.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Overview of analysis workflow. Abbreviations: MLOD (maximum LOD score), LODj (family-specific LOD score for family j), QC (quality control), PCs (principal components), R-INT (rescaled inverse normal transformation), AA (African American), EA (European American), EAS (Eastern Asian/Asian American), HA (Hispanic American)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Linkage analysis with HyperGEN and GENOA subjects in TOPMed Freeze 6a release. Abbreviations: SBP (systolic blood pressure); DBP (diastolic blood pressure); PP (pulse pressure); cM (centimorgan); LOD (logarithm of the odds); MLOD (maximum LOD score)
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Heat map of p-values from GTEx tissue-specific gene expression association analysis. Gene expression-association analyses were conducted in EPACTS using variable threshold burden test (BurdenVT) and Sequence Kernel Association Test (SKAT)

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