Publications by authors named "W Byerley"

Bipolar disorder is a leading contributor to the global burden of disease. Despite high heritability (60-80%), the majority of the underlying genetic determinants remain unknown. We analysed data from participants of European, East Asian, African American and Latino ancestries (n = 158,036 cases with bipolar disorder, 2.

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Next-generation sequencing is widely applied to the investigation of pedigree data for gene discovery. However, identifying plausible disease-causing variants within a robust statistical framework is challenging. Here, we introduce BICEP: a Bayesian inference tool for rare variant causality evaluation in pedigree-based cohorts.

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Copy number variants (CNVs) have been implicated in many human diseases, including psychiatric disorders. Whole genome sequencing offers advantages in CNV calling compared to previous array-based methods. Here we present a robust and transparent CNV calling pipeline, PECAN (PEdigree Copy number vAriaNt calling), for short-read, whole genome sequencing data, comprised of a novel combination of four calling methods and structural variant genotyping.

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Background: Recent work from the Schizophrenia Exome Sequencing Meta-analysis (SCHEMA) consortium showed significant enrichment of ultrarare variants in schizophrenia cases. Family-based studies offer a unique opportunity to evaluate rare variants because risk in multiplex pedigrees is more likely to be influenced by the same collection of variants than an unrelated cohort.

Methods: Here, we examine whole genome sequencing data from 35 individuals across 6 pedigrees multiply affected by schizophrenia.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Researchers discovered 287 genomic regions associated with schizophrenia, emphasizing genes specifically active in excitatory and inhibitory neurons, and identified 120 key genes potentially responsible for these associations.
  • * The findings highlight important biological processes related to neuronal function, suggesting overlaps between common and rare genetic variants in both schizophrenia and neurodevelopmental disorders, ultimately aiding future research on these conditions.
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