Extracting disease risk profiles from expression data for linkage analysis: application to prostate cancer

The genetic factors underlying many complex traits are not well understood. The Genetic Analysis Workshop 15 Problem 1 data present the opportunity to explore whether gene expression data from microarrays can be utilized to define useful phenotypes for linkage analysis in complex diseases. We utilize expression profiles for multiple genes that have been associated with a disease to develop a composite 'risk profile' that can be used to map other loci involved in the same disease process. Using prostate cancer as our disease of interest, we identified 26 genes whose expression levels had previously been associated with prostate cancer and defined three phenotypes: high, neutral, or low risk profiles, based on individual expression levels. Linkage analyses using MCLINK, a Markov-chain Monte Carlo method, and MERLIN were performed for all three phenotypes. Both methods were in very close agreement. Genome-wide suggestive linkage evidence was observed on chromosomes 6 and 4. It was interesting to note that the linkage signals did not appear to be strongly influenced by the location of the original 26 genes used in the phenotype definition, indicating that composite measures may have potential to locate additional genes in the same process. In this example, however, extreme caution is necessary in any extrapolation of the identified loci to prostate cancer due to the lack of data regarding the behavior of these genes' expression level in lymphoblastoid cells. Our results do indicate there exists potential to augment our current knowledge about the relationships among genes associated with complex diseases using expression data.