Relatedness disequilibrium regression estimates heritability without environmental bias.

Young AI., Frigge ML., Gudbjartsson DF., Thorleifsson G., Bjornsdottir G., Sulem P., Masson G., Thorsteinsdottir U., Stefansson K., Kong A.

Heritability measures the proportion of trait variation that is due to genetic inheritance. Measurement of heritability is important in the nature-versus-nurture debate. However, existing estimates of heritability may be biased by environmental effects. Here, we introduce relatedness disequilibrium regression (RDR), a novel method for estimating heritability. RDR avoids most sources of environmental bias by exploiting variation in relatedness due to random Mendelian segregation. We used a sample of 54,888 Icelanders who had both parents genotyped to estimate the heritability of 14 traits, including height (55.4%, s.e. 4.4%) and educational attainment (17.0%, s.e. 9.4%). Our results suggest that some other estimates of heritability may be inflated by environmental effects.

DOI

10.1038/s41588-018-0178-9

Type

Journal article

Journal

Nature genetics

Publication Date

09/2018

Volume

50

Pages

1304 - 1310

Addresses

deCODE genetics/Amgen Inc., Reykjavik, Iceland. alexander.young@bdi.ox.ac.uk.

Keywords

Humans, Environment, Genotype, Quantitative Trait, Heritable, Linkage Disequilibrium, Phenotype, Models, Genetic, Iceland, Genetic Variation, Gene-Environment Interaction

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