Meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies in five cohorts reveals common variants in RBFOX1, a regulator of tissue-specific splicing, associated with refractive error.
Stambolian D., Wojciechowski R., Oexle K., Pirastu M., Li X., Raffel LJ., Cotch MF., Chew EY., Klein B., Klein R., Wong TY., Simpson CL., Klaver CCW., van Duijn CM., Verhoeven VJM., Baird PN., Vitart V., Paterson AD., Mitchell P., Saw SM., Fossarello M., Kazmierkiewicz K., Murgia F., Portas L., Schache M., Richardson A., Xie J., Wang JJ., Rochtchina E., DCCT/EDIC Research Group None., Viswanathan AC., Hayward C., Wright AF., Polasek O., Campbell H., Rudan I., Oostra BA., Uitterlinden AG., Hofman A., Rivadeneira F., Amin N., Karssen LC., Vingerling JR., Hosseini SM., Döring A., Bettecken T., Vatavuk Z., Gieger C., Wichmann H-E., Wilson JF., Fleck B., Foster PJ., Topouzis F., McGuffin P., Sim X., Inouye M., Holliday EG., Attia J., Scott RJ., Rotter JI., Meitinger T., Bailey-Wilson JE.
Visual refractive errors (REs) are complex genetic traits with a largely unknown etiology. To date, genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of moderate size have identified several novel risk markers for RE, measured here as mean spherical equivalent (MSE). We performed a GWAS using a total of 7280 samples from five cohorts: the Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS); the KORA study ('Cooperative Health Research in the Region of Augsburg'); the Framingham Eye Study (FES); the Ogliastra Genetic Park-Talana (OGP-Talana) Study and the Multiethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). Genotyping was performed on Illumina and Affymetrix platforms with additional markers imputed to the HapMap II reference panel. We identified a new genome-wide significant locus on chromosome 16 (rs10500355, P = 3.9 × 10(-9)) in a combined discovery and replication set (26 953 samples). This single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) is located within the RBFOX1 gene which is a neuron-specific splicing factor regulating a wide range of alternative splicing events implicated in neuronal development and maturation, including transcription factors, other splicing factors and synaptic proteins.