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Meta-Analysis
. 2024 Aug 7;14(8):jkae116.
doi: 10.1093/g3journal/jkae116.

The genetic architecture of dog ownership: large-scale genome-wide association study in 97,552 European-ancestry individuals

Tong Gong  1 , Robert Karlsson  1 , Shuyang Yao  1 , Patrik K E Magnusson  1 , Olesya Ajnakina  2   3 , Andrew Steptoe  2 , Laxmi Bhatta  4 , Ben Brumpton  4   5   6 , Ashish Kumar  7   8 , Erik Mélen  7   8   9 ; 23andMe research team; Keng-Han Lin  10 , Chao Tian  10 , Tove Fall  11 , Catarina Almqvist  1   12
Collaborators, Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

The genetic architecture of dog ownership: large-scale genome-wide association study in 97,552 European-ancestry individuals

Tong Gong et al. G3 (Bethesda). .

Abstract

Dog ownership has been associated with several complex traits, and there is evidence of genetic influence. We performed a genome-wide association study of dog ownership through a meta-analysis of 31,566 Swedish twins in 5 discovery cohorts and an additional 65,986 European-ancestry individuals in 3 replication cohorts from Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom. Association tests with >7.4 million single-nucleotide polymorphisms were meta-analyzed using a fixed effect model after controlling for population structure and relatedness. We identified 2 suggestive loci using discovery cohorts, which did not reach genome-wide significance after meta-analysis with replication cohorts. Single-nucleotide polymorphism-based heritability of dog ownership using linkage disequilibrium score regression was estimated at 0.123 (CI 0.038-0.207) using the discovery cohorts and 0.018 (CI -0.002 to 0.039) when adding in replication cohorts. Negative genetic correlation with complex traits including type 2 diabetes, depression, neuroticism, and asthma was only found using discovery summary data. Furthermore, we did not identify any genes/gene-sets reaching even a suggestive level of significance. This genome-wide association study does not, by itself, provide clear evidence on common genetic variants that influence dog ownership among European-ancestry individuals.

Keywords: European ancestry; GWAS; dog ownership; heritability; replication.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest KHL, CT, and the members of 23andMe Research Team are listed as authors or were employed by and hold stock or stock options in 23andMe, Inc.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Manhattan plots displaying GWAS results for dog ownership from the meta-analysis of discovery cohorts with or without replication cohorts. The upper panel represents meta-analyzed GWAS results of discovery cohorts, and the lower panel represents results from discovery and replication cohorts. The red and blue lines indicate the P-value thresholds of 5 × 10−8 and 5 × 10−7, respectively.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Genetic correlation between dog ownership (using summary data from the meta-analysis of discovery cohorts) and 30 complex traits.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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