Week 3

Purpose

The purpose of this video lecture is to provide an overview of gene-by-environment and gene-by-behavior interactions and explain methods used to test interaction effects.

Meet the Guest Speaker

Ruth Loos

Ruth Loos, Ph.D.

Ruth Loos is Vice Executive Director and Group Leader of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Basic Metabolic Research (CBMR) at the University of Copenhagen, and part-time professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NY. She has almost two decades of experience in researching the genetic causes of obesity. As a founding member of the GIANT (Genetic Investigation of ANTropometric traits) consortium, she has pioneered many of the large-scale gene-discovery efforts that have thus far identified more than 1,000 obesity-associated loci.

She has a particular interest in studying more refined adiposity phenotypes or composite phenotypes (of multiple adiposity-related traits) to reveal new biology that has not been uncovered by traditional obesity outcomes. Ruth collaborates with bioinformaticians, molecular biologists and physiologists to bridge the translation gap from variant to function.

As more and more GWAS loci are being discovered, she examines whether genotype information can be used to identify subtypes of obesity, to predict who is at risk of becoming obese or to prescribe tailored prevention and treatment strategies in the context of precision diagnosis, prevention and treatment.

Video Lecture

The video lecture is broken into four parts: General overview, testing of interaction effects, examples, and agenome-wide GxE study.

Please click each tab to watch each part of the video lecture.

General Overview
Testing of Interaction Effects
Examples
Agenome-Wide GxE Study

Testing of Interaction Effects

Examples

Agenome-Wide GxE Study

Accessibility Note: To access auto closed captions (CC) services please click on the icon in the video's bottom right corner. Manual CC are available by submitting a request for services to ATAC: (812) 856-4112 or atac@iu.edu

NOTE: Please click on the links below to download the video lecture slides:

Methodological issues in testing for gene-by-environment interaction

Readings

Below are articles you may be interested in reading regarding this topic (click on each article title to download it as a PDF file):

McAllister, K., Mechanic, L. E., Amos, C., Aschard, H., Blair, I. A., Chatterjee, N., ... & Witte, J. S. (2017). Current challenges and new opportunities for gene-environment interaction studies of complex diseases. American journal of epidemiology, 186(7), 753-761. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwx227
Gauderman, W. J., Mukherjee, B., Aschard, H., Hsu, L., Lewinger, J. P., Patel, C. J., ... & Chatterjee, N. (2017). Update on the state of the science for analytical methods for gene-environment interactions. American journal of epidemiology, 186(7), 762-770. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwx228