A genome-wide association study of autism reveals a common novel risk locus at 5p14.1.
Although autism is one of the most heritable neuropsychiatric disorders, its underlying genetic architecture has largely eluded description. To comprehensively examine the hypothesis that common variation is important in autism, we performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) using a discovery dataset of 438 autistic Caucasian families and the Illumina Human 1M beadchip. 96 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) demonstrated strong association with autism risk (p-value < 0.0001). The validation of the top 96 SNPs was performed using an independent dataset of 487 Caucasian autism families genotyped on the 550K Illumina BeadChip. A novel region on chromosome 5p14.1 showed significance in both the discovery and validation datasets. Joint analysis of all SNPs in this region identified 8 SNPs having improved p-values (3.24E-04 to 3.40E-06) than in either dataset alone. Our findings demonstrate that in addition to multiple rare variations, part of the complex genetic architecture of autism involves common variation.
Ma
Deqiong
D
Miami Institute for Human Genomics, University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine, Miami, FL, USA.
Salyakina
Daria
D
Jaworski
James M
JM
Konidari
Ioanna
I
Whitehead
Patrice L
PL
Andersen
Ashley N
AN
Hoffman
Joshua D
JD
Slifer
Susan H
SH
Hedges
Dale J
DJ
Cukier
Holly N
HN
Griswold
Anthony J
AJ
McCauley
Jacob L
JL
Beecham
Gary W
GW
Wright
Harry H
HH
Abramson
Ruth K
RK
Martin
Eden R
ER
Hussman
John P
JP
Gilbert
John R
JR
Cuccaro
Michael L
ML
Haines
Jonathan L
JL
Pericak-Vance
Margaret A
MA
D000293:Adolescent; D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000235:genetics*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002895:Chromosomes, Human, Pair 5 / Q000235:genetics*; D005260:Female; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010375:Pedigree; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D044465:White People / Q000235:genetics; D055815:Young Adult