Rare and low-frequency coding variants alter human adult height

Eirini Marouli, Mariaelisa Graff, Carolina Medina-Gomez, Ken Sin Lo, Andrew R Wood, Troels R Kjaer, Rebecca S Fine, Yingchang Lu, Claudia Schurmann, Heather M Highland, Sina Rüeger, Gudmar Thorleifsson, Anne E Justice, David Lamparter, Kathleen E Stirrups, Valérie Turcot, Kristin L Young, Thomas W Winkler, Tõnu Esko, Tugce KaraderiAdam E Locke, Nicholas G D Masca, Maggie C Y Ng, Poorva Mudgal, Manuel A Rivas, Sailaja Vedantam, Anubha Mahajan, Xiuqing Guo, Goncalo Abecasis, Katja K Aben, Linda S Adair, Dewan S Alam, Eva Albrecht, Kristine H Allin, Matthew Allison, Philippe Amouyel, Emil V Appel, Dominique Arveiler, John C Chambers, Fotios Drenos, Paul Mitchell, Colin N A Palmer, Robert A Scott, Jennifer A Smith, Katherine E Tansey, Mark Walker, Helen R Warren, James G Wilson, Michael O Woods, Wei Zhou, EPIC InterAct Consortium

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

435 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Height is a highly heritable, classic polygenic trait with approximately 700 common associated variants identified through genome-wide association studies so far. Here, we report 83 height-associated coding variants with lower minor-allele frequencies (in the range of 0.1-4.8%) and effects of up to 2 centimetres per allele (such as those in IHH, STC2, AR and CRISPLD2), greater than ten times the average effect of common variants. In functional follow-up studies, rare height-increasing alleles of STC2 (giving an increase of 1-2 centimetres per allele) compromised proteolytic inhibition of PAPP-A and increased cleavage of IGFBP-4 in vitro, resulting in higher bioavailability of insulin-like growth factors. These 83 height-associated variants overlap genes that are mutated in monogenic growth disorders and highlight new biological candidates (such as ADAMTS3, IL11RA and NOX4) and pathways (such as proteoglycan and glycosaminoglycan synthesis) involved in growth. Our results demonstrate that sufficiently large sample sizes can uncover rare and low-frequency variants of moderate-to-large effect associated with polygenic human phenotypes, and that these variants implicate relevant genes and pathways.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)186-190
Number of pages5
JournalNature
Volume542
Issue number7640
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 9 Feb 2017

Keywords

  • Journal Article

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