We are continuously involved in large international collaborative projects. This year, as before, our group has contributed to several genome-wide association studies (GWAS), projects that demand a huge number of participants to identify variation in the genome that is associated with a specific trait.
One of these studies was just published in Nature Communications (Zillikens et al. (2017). Large meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies identifies five loci for lean body mass). It was found that lean body mass (which consists mainly of muscle mass), was associated with a number of single-nucleotide polymorphisms. These associations were discovered in a sample of 38,292 people from 20 cohorts, and subjects from 33 additional studies were used to replicate the findings (with a total sample of 63,475 people).
Another GWAS meta-analysis was recently published in Molecular Psychiatry (Trampush et al (2017). GWAS meta-analysis reveals novel loci and genetic correlates for general cognitive function: a report from the COGENT consortium). In this study, general cognitive functioning was found to be associated with new loci, based on data from 24 cohorts (enrolling 35,298 individuals). However, the effects of any individual single-nucleotide polymorphisms were very small: in other words, small differences in the genome each accounted only for a very small portion of the variance in cognitive performance – as tends to be the case with psychological traits.
/Sara Sammallahti