Genes 2 Brains 2 Mind 2 Me

An historic find has occurred in the quest (gold-rush, if you will) to link genome variation with brain structure-function variation.  This is the publication of the very first genome-wide (GWAS) analysis of individual voxels (voxels are akin to pixels in a photograph, but are rather 3D cubes of brain-image-space about 1mm on each side) of brain structure – Voxelwise genome-wide association study (vGWAS) [doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.02.032] by Jason Stein and colleagues under the leadership of Paul M. Thompson, a  leader in the area of neuroimaging and genetics – well-known for his work on brain structure in twin and psychiatric patient populations.

In an effort to discover genes that contribute to individual differences in brain structure, the authors took on the task of statistically analyzing the some 31,622 voxels (per brain) obtained from high-resolution structural brain scans; with 448,293 Illumina SNP genotypes (per person) with minor allele frequencies greater than 0.1 (common variants); in 740 unrelated healthy caucasian adults.  When performed on a voxel-by-voxel basis, this amounts to some 14 billion statistical tests.

Yikes!  A statistical nightmare with plenty of room for false positive results, not to mention the recent disillusionment with the common-variant GWAS approach?  Certainly.  The authors describe these pitfalls and other scenarios wherein false data is likely to arise and most of the paper addresses the pros and cons of different statistical analysis strategies – some which are prohibitive in their computational demands.  Undaunted, the authors describe several approaches for establishing appropriate thresholds and then utilize a ‘winner take all’ analysis strategy wherein a single ‘most-associated winning snp’ is identified for each voxel, which when clustered together in hot spots (at P = 2 x 10e-10), can point to specific brain areas of interest.

Using this analytical approach, the authors report that 8,212 snps were identified as ‘winning, most-associated’ snps across the 31,622 voxels.  They note that there was not as much symmetry with respect to winning snps in the left hemispere and corresponding areas in the right hemisphere, as one might have expected.  The 2 most significant snps across the entire brain and genome were rs2132683 and rs713155 which were associated with white matter near the left posterior lateral ventricle.  Other notable findings were rs2429582 in the synaptic (and possible autism risk factor) CADPS2 gene which was associated with temporal lobe structure and rs9990343 which sits in an intergenic region but is associated with frontal lobe structure.  These and several other notable snps are reported and brain maps are provided that show where in the brain each snp is associated.

As in most genome-wide studies, one can imagine that the authors were initially bewildered by their unexpected findings.  None of the ‘usual suspects’ such as neurotransmitter receptors, transcription factors, etc. etc. that dominate the psychiatric genetics literature.  Bewildered, perhaps, but maybe thats part of the fun and excitement of discovery!  Very exciting stuff to come I’ll bet as this new era unfolds!

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