Polygenic prediction of educational attainment within and between families from genome-wide association analyses in 3 million individuals
Aysu Okbay, Yeda Wu, Nancy Wang, Hariharan Jayashankar, Michael Bennett, Seyed Moeen Nehzati, Julia Sidorenko, Hyeokmoon Kweon, Grant Goldman, Tamara Gjorgjieva, Yunxuan Jiang, Barry Hicks, Chao Tian, David A. Hinds, Rafael Ahlskog, Patrik K. E. Magnusson, Sven Oskarsson, Caroline Hayward, Archie Campbell, David J. Porteous, Jeremy Freese, Pamela Herd, Michelle Agee, Babak Alipanahi, Adam Auton, Robert K. Bell, Katarzyna Bryc, Sarah L. Elson, Pierre Fontanillas, Nicholas A. Furlotte, David A. Hinds, Karen E. Huber, Aaron Kleinman, Nadia K. Litterman, Jennifer C. McCreight, Matthew H. McIntyre, Joanna L. Mountain, Carrie A. M. Northover, Steven J. Pitts, J. Fah Sathirapongsasuti, Olga V. Sazonova, Janie F. Shelton, Suyash Shringarpure, Joyce Y. Tung, Vladimir Vacic, Catherine H. Wilson, Mark Alan Fontana, Tune H. Pers, Cornelius A. Rietveld, Guo‐Bo Chen, Valur Emilsson, S. Fleur W. Meddens, Joseph K. Pickrell, Kevin Thom, Pascal Timshel, Ronald de Vlaming, Abdel Abdellaoui, Tarunveer S. Ahluwalia, Jonas Bačelis, Clemens Baumbach, Gyða Björnsdóttir, J Brandsma, Maria Pina Concas, Jaime Derringer, Tessel E. Galesloot, Giorgia Girotto, Richa Gupta, Leanne M. Hall, Sarah E. Harris, Edith Hofer, Momoko Horikoshi, Jennifer E. Huffman, Kadri Kaasik, Ioanna Panagiota Kalafati, Robert Karlsson, Jari Lahti, Sven J. van der Lee, Christiaan de Leeuw, Penelope A. Lind, Karl‐Oskar Lindgren, Tian Liu, Massimo Mangino, Jonathan Marten, Evelin Mihailov, Michael Miller, Peter J. van der Most, Christopher Oldmeadow, Antony Payton, Natalia Pervjakova, Wouter J. Peyrot, Yong Qian, Olli T. Raitakari, Rico Rueedi, Erika Salvi, Börge Schmidt, Katharina E. Schraut, Jianxin Shi, Albert V. Smith, Raymond A. Poot, Beaté St Pourcain
Abstract
We conduct a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of educational attainment (EA) in a sample of ~3 million individuals and identify 3,952 approximately uncorrelated genome-wide-significant single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). A genome-wide polygenic predictor, or polygenic index (PGI), explains 12-16% of EA variance and contributes to risk prediction for ten diseases. Direct effects (i.e., controlling for parental PGIs) explain roughly half the PGI's magnitude of association with EA and other phenotypes. The correlation between mate-pair PGIs is far too large to be consistent with phenotypic assortment alone, implying additional assortment on PGI-associated factors. In an additional GWAS of dominance deviations from the additive model, we identify no genome-wide-significant SNPs, and a separate X-chromosome additive GWAS identifies 57.