1. Genetic characterization of Greek population isolates reveals strong genetic drift at missense and trait-associated variants.
- Author
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Panoutsopoulou K, Hatzikotoulas K, Xifara DK, Colonna V, Farmaki AE, Ritchie GR, Southam L, Gilly A, Tachmazidou I, Fatumo S, Matchan A, Rayner NW, Ntalla I, Mezzavilla M, Chen Y, Kiagiadaki C, Zengini E, Mamakou V, Athanasiadis A, Giannakopoulou M, Kariakli VE, Nsubuga RN, Karabarinde A, Sandhu M, McVean G, Tyler-Smith C, Tsafantakis E, Karaleftheri M, Xue Y, Dedoussis G, and Zeggini E
- Subjects
- Adolescent, Blood Cells cytology, Cell Size, Cohort Studies, Gene Frequency genetics, Genome-Wide Association Study, Greece, Haplotypes genetics, Humans, Phenotype, Social Isolation, Genetic Drift, Genetic Variation genetics, Genetics, Population, Genotype, Mutation, Missense genetics, Population genetics
- Abstract
Isolated populations are emerging as a powerful study design in the search for low-frequency and rare variant associations with complex phenotypes. Here we genotype 2,296 samples from two isolated Greek populations, the Pomak villages (HELIC-Pomak) in the North of Greece and the Mylopotamos villages (HELIC-MANOLIS) in Crete. We compare their genomic characteristics to the general Greek population and establish them as genetic isolates. In the MANOLIS cohort, we observe an enrichment of missense variants among the variants that have drifted up in frequency by more than fivefold. In the Pomak cohort, we find novel associations at variants on chr11p15.4 showing large allele frequency increases (from 0.2% in the general Greek population to 4.6% in the isolate) with haematological traits, for example, with mean corpuscular volume (rs7116019, P=2.3 × 10(-26)). We replicate this association in a second set of Pomak samples (combined P=2.0 × 10(-36)). We demonstrate significant power gains in detecting medical trait associations.
- Published
- 2014
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