Genome-wide analysis indicates association between heterozygote advantage and healthy aging in humans
Posted on 2019-07-02 - 05:00
Abstract Background Genetic diversity is known to confer survival advantage in many species across the tree of life. Here, we hypothesize that such pattern applies to humans as well and could be a result of higher fitness in individuals with higher genomic heterozygosity. Results We use healthy aging as a proxy for better health and fitness, and observe greater heterozygosity in healthy-aged individuals. Specifically, we find that only common genetic variants show significantly higher excess of heterozygosity in the healthy-aged cohort. Lack of difference in heterozygosity for low-frequency variants or disease-associated variants excludes the possibility of compensation for deleterious recessive alleles as a mechanism. In addition, coding SNPs with the highest excess of heterozygosity in the healthy-aged cohort are enriched in genes involved in extracellular matrix and glycoproteins, a group of genes known to be under long-term balancing selection. We also find that individual heterozygosity rate is a significant predictor of electronic health record (EHR)-based estimates of 10-year survival probability in men but not in women, accounting for several factors including age and ethnicity. Conclusions Our results demonstrate that the genomic heterozygosity is associated with human healthspan, and that the relationship between higher heterozygosity and healthy aging could be explained by heterozygote advantage. Further characterization of this relationship will have important implications in aging-associated disease risk prediction.
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Xu, Ke; Kosoy, Roman; Shameer, Khader; Kumar, Sudhir; Liu, Li; Readhead, Ben; et al. (2019). Genome-wide analysis indicates association between heterozygote advantage and healthy aging in humans. figshare. Collection. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4563659
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AUTHORS (10)
KX
Ke Xu
RK
Roman Kosoy
KS
Khader Shameer
SK
Sudhir Kumar
LL
Li Liu
BR
Ben Readhead
GB
Gillian Belbin
HL
Hao-Chih Lee
RC
Rong Chen
JD
Joel Dudley