Abstract:

Objective  To infer gene-gene interaction on multiple quantitative traits using partial least squares path model (PLSPM).  Methods   Simulation was used to evaluate the stability and power of the PLSPM-based statistic, which was further applied to identify the interaction between FTO gene and NEGR1 gene on related multiple quantitative traits in one real dataset. Results  The proposed PLSPM-based statistic was stable and its power increased with the increasing of sample size and interaction effect. The interaction of gene regions FTO (Chr16:52390317.. 52391106) and NEGR1 (Chr1:71707640.. 71709688) for correlated multiple quantitative traits showed statistical significance (P=0039). Conclusion  The proposed PLSPM-based statistic is powerful to detect gene-gene interaction for multiple quantitative traits.

Key words: Partial least squares path model; Interaction; Multiple quantitative traits