Genome ‐wide survey in African Americans demonstrates potential epistasis of fitness in the human genome

In this study, we developed a novel method to detect fitness epistasis by testing the correlation between local ancestries on different chromosomes in an admixed population. We inferred local ancestry across the genome in 16,252 unrelated African Americans and systematically examined the pairwise correlations between the genomic regions on different chromosomes. Our analysis revealed a pair of genomic regions on chromosomes 4 and 6 that show significant local ancestry correlation (P‐value = 4.01 × 10−8) that can be potentially attributed to fitness epistasis. However, we also observed substantial local ancestry correlation that cannot be explained by systemic ancestry inference bias. To our knowledge, this study is the first to systematically examine evidence of fitness epistasis across the human genome.

Source: Genetic Epidemiology - December 4, 2016 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Heming Wang, Yoonha Choi, Bamidele Tayo, Xuefeng Wang, Nathan Morris, Xiang Zhang, Uli Broeckel, Craig Hanis, Sharon Kardia, Susan Redline, Richard S Cooper, Hua Tang, Xiaofeng Zhu Tags: Research Article Source Type: research