An evaluation of noncoding genome annotation tools through enrichment analysis of 15 genome-wide association studies

Functionally annotating genetic variations is an essential yet challenging topic in human genetics research. As large consortia including ENCODE and Roadmap Epigenomics Project continue to generate high-throughput transcriptomic and epigenomic data, many computational frameworks have been developed to integrate these experimental data to predict functionality of genetic variations in both protein-coding and noncoding regions. Here, we compare a number of recently developed annotation frameworks for noncoding regions through enrichment analysis on genome-wide association studies (GWASs). We also compare several different strategies to quantify enrichment using GWAS summary statistics. Our analyses highlight the importance of jointly modeling context-specific annotations with genome-wide data in providing statistically powerful and biologically interpretable enrichment for complex disease associations. Our findings provide insights into when and how computational genome annotations may benefit future complex disease studies on the genome-wide scale.