Systems genetics approaches for understanding complex traits with relevance for human disease

Hooman Allayee; Charles R Farber; Marcus M Seldin; Evan Graehl Williams; David E James; Aldons J Lusis

doi:10.7554/eLife.91004

Systems genetics approaches for understanding complex traits with relevance for human disease

Elife. 2023 Nov 14:12:e91004. doi: 10.7554/eLife.91004.

Authors

Hooman Allayee^#^{1

2}, Charles R Farber^#^{3

4

5}, Marcus M Seldin⁶, Evan Graehl Williams⁷, David E James^{8

9

10}, Aldons J Lusis^{11

12

13}

Affiliations

¹ Departments of Population & Public Health Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, United States.
² Biochemistry & Molecular Medicine, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, United States.
³ Center for Public Health Genomics, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, United States.
⁴ Departments of Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, United States.
⁵ Public Health Sciences, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, United States.
⁶ Department of Biological Chemistry, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, United States.
⁷ Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Luxembourg.
⁸ School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Camperdown, Australia.
⁹ Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney, Camperdown, Australia.
¹⁰ Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney, Camperdown, Australia.
¹¹ Departments of Human Genetics, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, United States.
¹² Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, United States.
¹³ Microbiology, Immunology, & Molecular Genetics, David Geffen School of Medicine of UCLA, Los Angeles, United States.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Quantitative traits are often complex because of the contribution of many loci, with further complexity added by environmental factors. In medical research, systems genetics is a powerful approach for the study of complex traits, as it integrates intermediate phenotypes, such as RNA, protein, and metabolite levels, to understand molecular and physiological phenotypes linking discrete DNA sequence variation to complex clinical and physiological traits. The primary purpose of this review is to describe some of the resources and tools of systems genetics in humans and rodent models, so that researchers in many areas of biology and medicine can make use of the data.

Keywords: complex traits; computational biology; genetics; genomics; human populations; mouse models; omics; systems biology; systems genetics.

Systems genetics approaches for understanding complex traits with relevance for human disease

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