Kenny Westerman

[Kenny Westerman @kewesterman]

@tamar_sofer at lunch: "Do gene-environment interactions really exist?" A year later, we've collected our thoughts on mechanisms that produce a detectable GxE and when we might care: https://t.co/0kxvsbcGax
Compliments/criticisms/personal attacks welcome!

[Kenny Westerman @kewesterman]

Thanks to the many co-authors and TOPMed contributors (including @Riudecanyenc, @deirdre_tobias, and @AlisaManningPhD), and I'd love to hear any feedback and suggestions for future work!

[Kenny Westerman @kewesterman]

Our gene-macronutrient interaction manuscript is out in Diabetes! https://t.co/XZ2GOOKPB4

We set out to find instances of genetic modification of the relationship between dietary macronutrients and glycemia.

[Kenny Westerman @kewesterman]

We report: some genetic discovery, some thoughts on statistical power grounded in realistic estimates of diet-related effect sizes and measurement error, and a model for integrating best practices from genetic epidemiology, interaction analysis, and nutritional epidemiology.

[Kenny Westerman @kewesterman]

@Alan_Couzens How specific are these exercise-related adaptations to the muscles being used, versus whole-body adaptations?

[Joanne B. Cole @JBCole150]

Can genetic heritability act as an unbiased metric to compare different phenotype processing methods? Check out our (@kewesterman @AlisaManningPhD et al) latest work applying this to my favorite phenotype (messy diet data).
https://t.co/4XOzR4p4RN

[Hyunkyung (Claire) Kim @Hyunkyungkim_]

Thrilled to share that our manuscript on T2D genetic clustering is now published!
Soft clustering analysis of type 2 diabetes loci identifies ten physiologically interpretable genetic clusters associated with distinct tissues and clinical outcomes.
https://t.co/gUlJT240qb

[Kenny Westerman @kewesterman]

@deirdre_tobias @Riudecanyenc @AmDiabetesAssn @LajousMartin At which point, finally, everything you touch will become causal. Congrats DeeDee!

[Tim Leshan @TIMatASPPH]

We had some very good in person @RallyForNIH meetings with @RepKClark and @RepLynch offices as well as virtually with @SenMarkey & @SenWarren. Thank you all for your steadfast support of the @NIH budget! @DanaFarber @HowardU @ASPPHtweets @GeneticsSociety

[Kenny Westerman @kewesterman]

But in seriousness, I hope this work encourages discussion about statistical power for gene-diet (and generally, GxE) interactions. Our power calcs here depend substantially on parameter assumptions; what interaction effect sizes are (1) realistic, and (2) practically relevant?

[Kenny Westerman @kewesterman]

I won't go full tweetorial while on vacation, but check out our new preprint! https://t.co/DSq8sI3O8s

If you like carbohydrates and/or sobering power calculations, this one's for you!

[Kenny Westerman @kewesterman]

@doctorveera @jacobjchr Our investigation of this isn't published, but was related to what became the triglyceride vignette here: https://t.co/SeSiEXMSej

The idea of TM6SF2 pleiotropy in genetic effects has been described though, for example: https://t.co/xC0AdOqMmi

[Kenny Westerman @kewesterman]

Shout-out to co-authors @JBCole150, @AlisaManningPhD, @miriam_udler, and others.

You can browse and download our catalog of vQTLs and GxEs on the @AMP_CMDKP (https://t.co/UL7tyXjNJY) -- let us know what you think!

[Kenny Westerman @kewesterman]

Our manuscript on variance-quantitative trait loci and exposome-wide interaction testing is now published! https://t.co/9nrGozXOTo

[Kenny Westerman @kewesterman]

2) We additionally tested for GxEs across all main-effect loci (not just vQTLs), showing that loci with vQTLs were much more enriched for underlying GxEs than standard GWAS loci. This finding supports the original motivation for this project and agrees with existing literature.

[Kenny Westerman @kewesterman]

@jacobjchr @KCKlatt @sguyenet Although this definitely remains in the fundamental category of "p-value threshold worship"!

[Kenny Westerman @kewesterman]

@jacobjchr @KCKlatt @sguyenet We've used a PCA-based method to generate a specific number of "effective" tests to use for Bonferroni correction -- see Methods section here: https://t.co/l1i73vy2fU