Tag: populationstructure

Multiple testing correction in linear mixed models

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Our group recently published a new paper on multiple testing applied to genetic studies with population structure.  This project was led by Jong Wha (Joanne) Joo and also involved Farhad Hormozdiari.  The project was joint with Buhm Han’s group.  The approach built upon Buhm Han’s previous work SLIDE (Han et al. 2009; Han and Eskin 2012).
 
Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have discovered many variants that are associated with complex traits in the human genome. In GWAS, researchers collect both phenotypic information and genetic information on variants spread through the genome from a population. In order to identify the set of variants associated with a trait of interest, we assess correlations between the phenotype and the genetic information at each variant, which we call the genotype. GWAS are now routinely performed on tens of thousands of individuals—and millions of genetic variants.
 
GWAS methodology must address specific problems that are tied to this exceptionally large scale of analysis. One major challenge in GWAS is multiple hypothesis testing. In routine analyses, the significance of hypothesis testing is assessed using the p value as a per-marker threshold. However, GWAS involves computing up to millions of statistical tests in a single study. When using traditional association study techniques, multiple hypothesis testing can generate false positives or spurious associations, and p value threshold for significance must be adjusted to control the overall false positive rate.
Several approaches are useful in correcting these potential pitfalls, including Bonferroni correction and permutation test.
 
Recently, researchers have accepted the linear mixed model (LMM) as standard practice for performing GWAS. The LMM can address two important challenges in GWAS: population structure and insufficient power. Population structure refers to the complex relatedness structure among individuals, which can drive errors in data reporting such as false positives. In many cases, LMM approaches can increase the statistical power and avoid generating false positives by explicitly modeling the population structure’s genetic relationships. Nonetheless, multiple hypothesis testing with LMM approaches may generate some errors of association. Unfortunately, the current approaches for multiple hypothesis testing correction cannot be applied to LMM.  This is because population structure actually affects the correlation structure of the statistics as we show in the paper.
 
To address this issue, we developed the first gold standard approach for multiple hypothesis testing correction in LMM. This method, called multiple testing in transformed space (MultiTrans), can efficiently correct for multiple testing in LMM approaches. MultiTrans is a parametric bootstrapping resampling approach that is the equivalent of the permutation test. Specifically, our approach samples randomized null phenotypes from the distribution fitted by LMM.
 
Straightforward parametric bootstrapping where phenotypes are sampled is prohibitively computationally expensive.  MultiTrans instead utilizes   a Multivariate Normal Distribution to directly samples the association statistics.  The figure shows an overview of our methodology.
figure-overview
The full citation to our paper is:

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Multiple hypothesis testing is an essential step in GWAS analysis. The correct per-marker threshold differs as a function of species, marker densities, genetic relatedness, and trait heritability—and no previous multiple testing correction methods can comprehensively account for these factors. The method we developed to address this issue, MultiTrans, is an efficient and accurate multiple testing correction approach for LMM. Our method (a) performs a unique transformation of genotype data to account for actual genetic relatedness and heritability under LMM approaches, and (b) efficiently utilizes the multivariate normal distribution. Using MultiTrans, we accurately estimated per-marker thresholds in mouse, yeast, and human datasets—while reducing computation time from months to hours.

Identification of causal genes for complex traits (CAVIAR-gene)

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Although genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified thousands of variants associated with common diseases and complex traits, only a handful of these variants are validated to be causal. We consider ‘causal variants’ as variants which are responsible for the association signal at a locus. As opposed to association studies that benefit from linkage disequilibrium (LD), the main challenge in identifying causal variants at associated loci lies in distinguishing among the many closely correlated variants due to LD. This is particularly important for model organisms such as inbred mice, where LD extends much further than in human populations, resulting in large stretches of the genome with significantly associated variants. Furthermore, these model organisms are highly structured and require correction for population structure to remove potential spurious associations.

In our recently published work, we propose CAVIAR-Gene (CAusal Variants Identification in Associated Regions), a novel method that is able to operate across large LD regions of the genome while also correcting for population structure. A key feature of our approach is that it provides as output a minimally sized set of genes that captures the genes which harbor causal variants with probability q. Through extensive simulations, we demonstrate that our method not only speeds up computation, but also have an average of 10% higher recall rate compared with the existing approaches. We validate our method using a real mouse high-density lipoprotein data (HDL) and show that CAVIAR-Gene is able to identify Apoa2 (a gene known to harbor causal variants for HDL), while reducing the number of genes that need to be tested for functionality by a factor of 2.

In the context of association studies, the genetic variants which are responsible for the association signal at a locus are referred to in the genetics literature as the ‘causal variants.’ Causal variants have biological effect on the phenotype.

CAVIAR-Gene provides better ranking of the causal genes for Outbred, F2, and HMDP datasets. Panels a and b illustrate the results for Outbred genotypes for case where we have one causal and two causal genes, respectively. Panels c and d illustrate the results for F2 genotypes for case where we have one causal and two causal genes, respectively. Panels e and f illustrate the results for Outbred genotypes for case where we have one causal and two causal genes, respectively.

CAVIAR-Gene provides better ranking of the causal genes for Outbred, F2, and HMDP datasets. Panels a and b illustrate the results for Outbred genotypes for case where we have one causal and two causal genes, respectively. Panels c and d illustrate the results for F2 genotypes for case where we have one causal and two causal genes, respectively. Panels e and f illustrate the results for Outbred genotypes for case where we have one causal and two causal genes, respectively.

Generally, variants can be categorized into three main groups. The first group is the causal variants which have a biological effect on the phenotype and are responsible for the association signal. The second group is the variants which are statistically associated with the phenotype due to LD with a causal variant. Even though association tests for these variants may be statistically significant, under our definition, they are not causal variants. The third group is the variants which are not statistically associated with the phenotype and are not causal.

CAVIAR-Gene is a statistical method for fine mapping that addresses two main limitations of existing methods. First, as opposed to existing approaches that focus on individual variants, we propose to search only over the space of gene combinations that explain the statistical association signal, and thus drastically reduce runtime. Second, CAVIAR-Gene extends existing framework for fine mapping to account for population structure. The output of our approach is a minimal set of genes that will contain the true casual gene at a pre-specified significance level.  The output of our approach is a minimal set of genes that will contain the true casual gene at a pre-specified significance level. This gene set together with its individual gene probability of causality provides a natural way of prioritizing genes for functional testing (e.g. knockout strategies) in model organisms. Through extensive simulations, we demonstrate that CAVIAR-Gene is superior to existing methodologies, requiring the smallest set of genes to follow-up in order to capture the true causal gene(s).

Building off our previous work with CAVIAR,  CAVIAR-Gene takes as input the marginal statistics for each variant at a locus, an LD matrix consisting of pairwise Pearson correlations computed between the genotypes of a pair of genetic variants, a partitioning of the set of variants in a locus into genes, and the kinship matrix which indicates the genetic similarity between each pair of individuals. Marginal statistics are computed using methods that correct for population structure.  We consider a variant to be causal when the variant is responsible for the association signal at a locus and aim to discriminate these variants from ones that are correlated due to LD.

In model organisms, the large stretches of LD regions result in a large number of variants associated in each region, thus making CAVIAR computationally

infeasible. Instead of producing a rho causal set of SNPs, CAVIAR-gene detects a ‘q causal gene set’ which is a set of genes in the locus that will contain the actual causal genes with probability of at least q.

For further details of our new method, CAVIAR-gene, view our full paper here:

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Accurate viral population assembly from ultra-deep sequencing data

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Overview of high-fidelity sequencing protocol. (A) DNA material from a viral population is cleaved into sequence fragments using any suitable restriction enzyme. (B) Individual barcode sequences are attached to the fragments. Each tagged fragment is amplified by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). (C) Amplified fragments are then sequenced. (D) Reads are grouped according to the fragment of origin based on their individual barcode sequence. An error-correction protocol is applied for every read group, correcting the sequencing errors inside the group and producing corrected consensus reads. (E) Error-corrected reads are mapped to the population consensus. (F) SNVs are detected and assembled into individual viral genomes. The ordinary protocol lacks steps (B) and (D)

Overview of high-fidelity sequencing protocol. (A) DNA material from a viral population is cleaved into sequence fragments using any suitable restriction enzyme. (B) Individual barcode sequences are attached to the fragments. Each tagged fragment is amplified by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). (C) Amplified fragments are then sequenced. (D) Reads are grouped according to the fragment of origin based on their individual barcode sequence. An error-correction protocol is applied for every read group, correcting the sequencing errors inside the group and producing corrected consensus reads. (E) Error-corrected reads are mapped to the population consensus. (F) SNVs are detected and assembled into individual viral genomes. The ordinary protocol lacks steps (B) and (D)

Viral populations change rapidly throughout the course of an infection. Due to this, drugs that initially control an infection can rapidly become ineffective as the viral drug target mutates. For better drug design, however, we first must develop techniques to be able to detect and quantify the presence of various rare viral variants from a given sample.

Currently, next-generation sequencing technologies are employed to better understand and quantify viral population diversity. The existing technologies, however, have difficulty if distinguishing between rare viral variants and sequencing errors even when sequencing with high coverage. To overcome this problem, our lab has proposed a two-step solution in a recent paper by Serghei Mangul.

In his paper, Serghei suggested we first use a high-fidelity protocol known as Safe-SeqS with high coverage. This method employs the use of small individual barcodes that are attached to sequencing fragments before undergoing amplification by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and being sequenced. By comparing and taking a consensus of amplicons from the same initial sequence fragment, we can easily eliminate some sequencing errors from our data.

These consensus reads then are assembled using an accurate viral assembly method Serghei developed known as the Viral Genome Assembler (VGA). This software uses read overlapping, SNV detection, and a conflict graph to distinguish and reconstruct genome variants in the population. Finally, an expectation-maximization algorithm is used to estimate abundances of assembled viral variants.

In the paper, this approach was applied to both simulated and real data and found to outperform current state-of-the-art methods. Additionally, this viral assembly method is the first of its kind to scale to millions of sequencing reads.

The Viral Genome Assembler tool is freely available here: http://genetics.cs.ucla.edu/vga/

From the paper:
Advances in NGS and the ability to generate deep coverage data in the form of millions of reads provide exceptional resolution for studying the underlying genetic diversity of complex viral populations. However, errors produced by most sequencing protocols complicate distinguishing between true biological mutations and technical artifacts that confound detection of rare mutations and rare individual genome variants. A common approach is to use post-sequencing error correction techniques able to partially correct the sequencing errors. In contrast to clonal samples, the post-sequencing error correction methods are not well suited for mixed viral samples and may lead to filtering out true biological mutations. For this reason, current viral assembly methods are able to detect only highly abundant SNV, thus limiting the discovery of rare viral genomes.

Additional difficulty arises from the genomic architectures of viruses. Long common regions shared across viral population (known as conserved regions) introduce ambiguity in the assembly process. Conserved regions may be due low-diversity population or due to recombination with multiple cross-overs. In contrast to repeats in genome assembly, conserved regions may be phased based on relative abundances of viral variants. Low-diversity viral populations in which all pairs of individual genomes within a viral population have a small genetic distance from each other may represent additional challenges for the assembly procedure.

We apply a high-fidelity sequencing protocol to study viral population structure (Fig. 1). This protocol is able to eliminate errors from sequencing data by attaching individual barcodes during the library preparation step. After the fragments are sequenced, the barcodes identify clusters of reads that originated from the same fragment, thus facilitating error correction. Given that many reads are required to sequence each fragment, we are trading off an increase in sequence coverage for a reduction in error rate. Prior to assembly, we utilize the de novo consensus reconstruction tool, Vicuna (Yang et al., 2012), to produce a linear consensus directly from the sequence data. This approach offers more flexibility for samples that do not have ‘close’ reference sequences available. Traditional assembly methods (Gnerre et al., 2011; Luo et al., 2012; Zerbino and Birney, 2008) aim to reconstruct a linear consensus sequence and are not well-suited for assembling a large number of highly similar but distinct viral genomes. We instead take our ideas from haplotype assembly methods (Bansal and Bafna, 2008; Yang et al., 2013), which aim to reconstruct two closely related haplotypes. However, these methods are not applicable for assembly of a large (a priori unknown) number of individual genomes. Many existing viral assemblers estimate local population diversity and are not well suited for assembling full-length quasi-species variants spanning the entire viral genome. Available genome-wide assemblers able to reconstruct full-length quasi-species variants are originally designed for low throughput and are impractical for high throughput technologies containing millions of sequencing reads.

Overview of VGA. (A) The algorithm takes as input paired-end reads that have been mapped to the population consensus. (B) The first step in the assembly is to determine pairs of conflicting reads that share different SNVs in the overlapping region. Pairs of conflicting reads are connected in the ‘conflict graph’. Each read has a node in the graph, and an edge is placed between each pair of conflicting reads. (C) The graph is colored into a minimal set of colors to distinguish between genome variants in the population. Colors of the graph correspond to independent sets of non-conflicting reads that are assembled into genome variants. In this example, the conflict graph can be minimally colored with four colors (red, green, violet and turquoise), each representing individual viral genomes. (D) Reads of the same color are then assembled into individual viral genomes. Only fully covered viral genomes are reported. (E) Reads are assigned to assembled viral genomes. Read may be shared across two or more viral genomes. VGA infers relative abundances of viral genomes using the expectation–maximization algorithm. (F) Long conserved regions are detected and phased based on expression profiles. In this example red and green viral genome share a long conserved region (colored in black). There is no direct evidence how the viral sub-genomes across the conserved region should be connected. In this example four possible phasing are valid. VGA use the expression information of every sub-genome to resolve ambiguous phasing.

Overview of VGA. (A) The algorithm takes as input paired-end reads that have been mapped to the population consensus. (B) The first step in the assembly is to determine pairs of conflicting reads that share different SNVs in the overlapping region. Pairs of conflicting reads are connected in the ‘conflict graph’. Each read has a node in the graph, and an edge is placed between each pair of conflicting reads. (C) The graph is colored into a minimal set of colors to distinguish between genome variants in the population. Colors of the graph correspond to independent sets of non-conflicting reads that are assembled into genome variants. In this example, the conflict graph can be minimally colored with four colors (red, green, violet and turquoise), each representing individual viral genomes. (D) Reads of the same color are then assembled into individual viral genomes. Only fully covered viral genomes are reported. (E) Reads are assigned to assembled viral genomes. Read may be shared across two or more viral genomes. VGA infers relative abundances of viral genomes using the expectation–maximization algorithm. (F) Long conserved regions are detected and phased based on expression profiles. In this example red and green viral genome share a long conserved region (colored in black). There is no direct evidence how the viral sub-genomes across the conserved region should be connected. In this example four possible phasing are valid. VGA use the expression information of every sub-genome to resolve ambiguous phasing.

We introduce a viral population assembly method (Fig. 2) working on highly accurate sequencing data able to detect rare variants and tolerate conserved regions shared across the population. Our method is coupled with post-assembly procedures able to detect and resolve ambiguity raised from long conserved regions using expression profiles (Fig. 2F). After a consensus has been reconstructed directly from the sequence data, our method detects SNVs from the aligned sequencing reads. Read overlapping is used to link individual SNVs and distinguish between genome variants in the population. The viral population is condensed in a conflict graph built from aligned sequencing data. Two reads are originated from different viral genomes if they share different SNVs in the overlapping region. Viral variants are identified from the graph as independent sets of non-conflicting reads. Non-continuous coverage of rare viral variants may limit assembly capacities, indicating that increase in coverage is required to increase the assembly accuracy. Frequencies of identified variants are then estimated using an expectation–maximization algorithm. Compared with existing approaches, we are able to detect rare population variants while achieving high assembly accuracy.

The full citation of our paper is:

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