Certain human traits such as neurodevelopmental disorders (NDs) and congenital anomalies (CAs) are believed to be primarily genetic in origin. However, even after whole-genome sequencing (WGS), a substantial fraction of such disorders remain unexplained. We hypothesize that some cases of ND-CA are caused by aberrant DNA methylation leading to dysregulated genome function. Comparing DNA methylation profiles from...
Disorders of the brain can exhibit considerable epidemiological comorbidity and often share symptoms, provoking debate about their etiologic overlap. We quantified the genetic sharing of 25 brain disorders from genome-wide association studies of 265,218 patients and 784,643 control participants and assessed their relationship to 17 phenotypes from 1,191,588 individuals. Psychiatric disorders share common varian...
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) risk is influenced by common polygenic and de novo variation. We aimed to clarify the influence of polygenic risk for ASD and to identify subgroups of ASD cases, including those with strongly acting de novo variants, in which polygenic risk is relevant. Using a novel approach called the polygenic transmission disequilibrium test and data from 6,454 families with a child with ASD, ...