Genetic Epidemiology, Translational Neurogenomics, Psychiatric Genetics and Statistical Genetics Laboratories investigate the pattern of disease in families, particularly identical and non-identical twins, to assess the relative importance of genes and environment in a variety of important health problems.
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PMID
18179399
TITLE
Prioritization of positional candidate genes using multiple web-based software tools.
ABSTRACT
The prioritization of genes within a candidate genomic region is an important step in the identification of causal gene variants affecting complex traits. Surprisingly, there have been very few reports of bioinformatics tools to perform such prioritization. The purpose of this article is to investigate the performance of 3 positional candidate gene software tools available, PosMed, GeneSniffer and SUSPECTS. The comparison was made for 40, 20 and 10 Mb regions in the human genome centred around known susceptibility genes for the common diseases breast cancer, Crohn's disease, age-related macular degeneration and schizophrenia. The known susceptibility gene was not always ranked highly, or not ranked at all, by 1 or more of the software tools. There was a large variation between the 3 tools regarding which genes were prioritized, and their rank order. PosMed and GeneSniffer were most similar in their prioritization gene list, whereas SUSPECTS identified the same candidate genes only for the narrowest (10 Mb) regions. Combining 2 or all of the candidate gene finding tools was superior in terms of ranking positional candidates. It is possible to reduce the number of candidate genes from a starting set in a region of interest by combining a variety of candidate gene finding tools. Conversely, we recommend caution in relying solely on single positional candidate gene prioritization tools. Our results confirm the obvious, that is, that starting with a narrower positional region gives a higher likelihood that the true susceptibility gene is selected, and that it is ranked highly. A narrow confidence interval for the mapping of complex trait genes by linkage can be achieved by maximizing marker informativeness and by having large samples. Our results suggest that the best approach to classify a minimum set of candidate genes is to take those genes that are prioritized by multiple prioritization tools.
DATE PUBLISHED
2007 Dec
HISTORY
PUBSTATUS PUBSTATUSDATE
pubmed 2008/01/09 09:00
medline 2008/02/02 09:00
entrez 2008/01/09 09:00
AUTHORS
NAME COLLECTIVENAME LASTNAME FORENAME INITIALS AFFILIATION AFFILIATIONINFO
Thornblad TA Thornblad Tobias A TA Genetic Epidemiology, Queensland Institute of Medical Research, Brisbane, Australia. tobias.thornblad@gmail.com
Elliott KS Elliott Kate S KS
Jowett J Jowett Jeremy J
Visscher PM Visscher Peter M PM
INVESTIGATORS
JOURNAL
VOLUME: 10
ISSUE: 6
TITLE: Twin research and human genetics : the official journal of the International Society for Twin Studies
ISOABBREVIATION: Twin Res Hum Genet
YEAR: 2007
MONTH: Dec
DAY:
MEDLINEDATE:
SEASON:
CITEDMEDIUM: Print
ISSN: 1832-4274
ISSNTYPE: Print
MEDLINE JOURNAL
MEDLINETA: Twin Res Hum Genet
COUNTRY: England
ISSNLINKING: 1832-4274
NLMUNIQUEID: 101244624
PUBLICATION TYPE
PUBLICATIONTYPE TEXT
Comparative Study
Evaluation Studies
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
COMMENTS AND CORRECTIONS
GRANTS
GENERAL NOTE
KEYWORDS
MESH HEADINGS
DESCRIPTORNAME QUALIFIERNAME
Breast Neoplasms genetics
Crohn Disease genetics
Female genetics
Genes, BRCA1 genetics
Genetic Predisposition to Disease genetics
Genome, Human genetics
Genomics statistics & numerical data
Humans statistics & numerical data
Internet statistics & numerical data
Macular Degeneration genetics
Male genetics
Models, Genetic genetics
Schizophrenia genetics
Software genetics
SUPPLEMENTARY MESH
GENE SYMBOLS
CHEMICALS
OTHER ID's