Monday, April 4, 2016

Pathways to smoking behaviours: biological insights from the Tobacco and Genetics Consortium meta-analysis

Pathways to smoking behaviours: biological insights from the Tobacco and Genetics Consortium meta-analysis

Image result for smoking and cancer


          By running gene and pathway analyses for several smoking behaviors in the Tobacco and Genetics Consortium (TAG) sample of 74 053 individuals, 21 genes and several chains of biological pathways were implicated. Analyses were carried out using the HYbrid Set-based Test (HYST) as implemented in the Knowledge-based mining system for Genome-wide Genetic studies software. Fifteen genes are novel and were not detected with the single nucleotide polymorphism-based approach in the original TAG analysis. For quantity smoked, 14 genes passed the false discovery rate of 0.05 (corrected for multiple testing), with the top association signal located at the IREB2 gene (P=1.57E-37). Three genomic loci were significantly associated with ever smoked. The top signal is located at the non-coding antisense RNA transcript BDNF-AS (P=6.25E-07) on 11p14. The SLC25A21 gene (P=2.09E-08) yielded the top association signal in the analysis of smoking cessation. The 19q13 noncoding RNA locus exceeded the genome-wide significance in the analysis of age at initiation (P=1.33E-06). Pathways belonging to the Neuronal system pathways, harboring the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor genes expressing the α (CHRNA 1-9), β (CHRNB 1-4), γ, δ and ε sub-units, yielded the smallest P-values in the pathway analysis of the quantity smoked (lowest P=4.90E-42). Additionally, pathways belonging to ‘a subway map of cancer pathways’ regulating the cell cycle, mitotic DNA replication, axon growth and synaptic plasticity were found significantly enriched for genetic variants in ever smokers relative to never smokers (lowest P=1.61E-07).
          This article was interesting to me because it was relating genes to smoking and to cancer. It talked about genes in smokes versus non-smokers and how smoking can lead to cancer. It was very cool to find out the genomic loci were associated with people who smoked.

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