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Record W4413425781 · doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1011822

Detecting latent interaction effects when analyzing binary traits

2025· article· en· W4413425781 on OpenAlexafffund
Ziang Zhang, Jerald F. Lawless, Andrew D. Paterson, Lei Sun

Bibliographic record

VenuePLoS Genetics · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
TopicGenetic Associations and Epidemiology
Canadian institutionsHospital for Sick ChildrenPublic Health OntarioUniversity of WaterlooUniversity of Toronto
FundersCanadian Statistical Sciences InstituteNatural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of CanadaUniversity of TorontoCentre for Addiction and Mental Health
KeywordsBiologyGeneticsComputational biologyEvolutionary biology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

In genome-wide association studies (GWAS), it is often desirable to test for interactions, such as gene-environment (G x E) or gene-gene (G x G) interactions, between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, G's) and environmental variables (E's). However, directly accounting for interaction is often infeasible, because the interacting variable is latent or the computational burden is too large. For quantitative traits (Y) that are approximately normally distributed, it has been shown that indirect testing on GxE can be done by testing for heteroskedasticity of Y between genotypes. However, when traits are binary, the existing methodology based on testing the heteroskedasticity of the trait across genotypes cannot be generalized. In this paper, we propose an approach to indirectly test interaction effects for binary traits and subsequently propose a joint test that accounts for the main and interaction effects of each SNP during GWAS. The final method is straightforward to implement in practice-it simply involves adding a non-additive (i.e., dominance) term to standard GWAS additive models for binary traits and testing its significance. We illustrate the statistical features including type-I-error control and power of the proposed method through extensive numerical studies. Applying our method to the UK Biobank dataset, we showcase the practical utility of the proposed method, revealing SNPs and genes with strong potential for latent interaction effects.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.032
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.126
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Simulation or modeling · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: Methods
Teacher disagreement score0.032
Threshold uncertainty score0.168

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0320.126
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0020.002
Bibliometrics0.0020.003
Science and technology studies0.0010.003
Scholarly communication0.0020.002
Open science0.0020.003
Research integrity0.0020.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0040.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.016
GPT teacher head0.272
Teacher spread0.256 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designSimulation or modeling
Domainnot available
GenreMethods

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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