Transfer Learning in Genome-Wide Association Studies with Knockoffs

Abstract

This paper presents and compares alternative transfer learning methods that can increase the power of conditional testing via knockoffs by leveraging prior information in external data sets collected from different populations or measuring related outcomes. The relevance of this methodology is explored in particular within the context of genome-wide association studies, where it can be helpful to address the pressing need for principled ways to suitably account for, and efficiently learn from the genetic variation associated to diverse ancestries. Finally, we apply these methods to analyze several phenotypes in the UK Biobank data set, demonstrating that transfer learning helps knockoffs discover more associations in the data collected from minority populations, potentially opening the way to the development of more accurate polygenic risk scores.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Nov 15, 2022
Source ID
10.1007/s13571-022-00297-y

Entities

People

  • Chiara Sabatti
  • Matteo Sesia
  • Shuangning Li
  • Zhimei Ren

Organizations

  • National Institutes of Health
  • Office of Naval Research

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Biology

Readers

  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Molecular and genetic basis of cancer.

Technology Areas

  • Biotechnology