Abstract

The overwhelming majority of participants in current genetic studies are of European ancestry. To elucidate disease biology in the East Asian population, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) with 212,453 Japanese individuals across 42 diseases. We detected 320 independent signals in 276 loci for 27 diseases, with 25 novel loci (P?<?9.58?×?10^?9). East Asian?specific missense variants were identified as candidate causal variants for three novel loci, and we successfully replicated two of them by analyzing independent Japanese cohorts; p.R220W of ATG16L2 (associated with coronary artery disease) and p.V326A of POT1 (associated with lung cancer). We further investigated enrichment of heritability within 2,868 annotations of genome-wide transcription factor occupancy, and identified 378 significant enrichments across nine diseases (false discovery rate?<?0.05) (for example, NKX3-1 for prostate cancer). This large-scale GWAS in a Japanese population provides insights into the etiology of complex diseases and highlights the importance of performing GWAS in non-European populations.

Paper

Title: Large scale genome-wide association study in a Japanese population identifies novel susceptibility loci across different diseases

Publication: Nature Genetics

Author: Kazuyoshi Ishigaki, Masato Akiyama, Masahiro Kanai, Atsushi Takahashi, Eiryo Kawakami, Hiroki Sugishita, Saori Sakaue, Nana Matoba, Siew-Kee Low, Yukinori Okada, Chikashi Terao, Tiffany Amariuta, Steven Gazal, Yuta Kochi, Momoko Horikoshi, Ken Suzuki, Kaoru Ito, Satoshi Koyama, Kouichi Ozaki, Shumpei Niida, Yasushi Sakata, Yasuhiko Sakata, Takashi Kohno, Kouya Shiraishi, Yukihide Momozawa, Makoto Hirata, Koichi Matsuda, Masashi Ikeda, Nakao Iwata, Shiro Ikegawa, Ikuyo Kou, Toshihiro Tanaka, Hidewaki Nakagawa, Akari Suzuki, Tomomitsu Hirota, Mayumi Tamari, Kazuaki Chayama, Daiki Miki, Masaki Mori, Satoshi Nagayama, Yataro Daigo, Yoshio Miki, Toyomasa Katagiri, Osamu Ogawa, Wataru Obara, Hidemi Ito, Teruhiko Yoshida, Issei Imoto, Takashi Takahashi, Chizu Tanikawa, Takao Suzuki, Nobuaki Sinozaki, Shiro Minami, Hiroki Yamaguchi, Satoshi Asai, Yasuo Takahashi, Ken Yamaji, Kazuhisa Takahashi, Tomoaki Fujioka, Ryo Takata, Hideki Yanai, Akihide Masumoto, Yukihiro Koretsune, Hiromu Kutsumi, Masahiko Higashiyama, Shigeo Murayama, Naoko Minegishi, Kichiya Suzuki, Kozo Tanno, Atsushi Shimizu, Taiki Yamaji, Motoki Iwasaki, Norie Sawada, Hirokazu Uemura, Keitaro Tanaka, Mariko Naito, Makoto Sasaki, Kenji Wakai, Shoichiro Tsugane, Masayuki Yamamoto, Kazuhiko Yamamoto, Yoshinori Murakami, Yusuke Nakamura, Soumya Raychaudhuri, Johji Inazawa, Toshimasa Yamauchi, Takashi Kadowaki, Michiaki Kubo and Yoichiro Kamatani

DOI: 10.1038/s41588-020-0640-3

Date: 08 June 2020