Discovery and Fine Mapping of Serum Protein Loci through Transethnic Meta-analysis

Many disorders are associated with altered serum protein concentrations, including malnutrition, cancer, and cardiovascular, kidney, and inflammatory diseases. Although these protein concentrations are highly heritable, relatively little is known about their underlying genetic determinants. Through transethnic meta-analysis of European-ancestry and Japanese genome-wide association studies, we identified six loci at genome-wide significance (p −8 ) for serum albumin ( HPN-SCN1B , GCKR-FNDC4 , SERPINF2-WDR81 , TNFRSF11A-ZCCHC2 , FRMD5-WDR76 , and RPS11-FCGRT , in up to 53,190 European-ancestry and 9,380 Japanese individuals) and three loci for total protein ( TNFRS13B , 6q21.3, and ELL2 , in …