Particle swarm optimization algorithm for analyzing SNP-SNP interaction of renin-angiotensin system genes against hypertension

Mol Biol Rep. 2013 Jul;40(7):4227-33. doi: 10.1007/s11033-013-2504-8. Epub 2013 May 22.

Abstract

Most non-significant individual single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were undiscovered in hypertension association studies. Their possible SNP-SNP interactions were usually ignored and leaded to missing heritability. In present study, we proposed a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm to analyze the SNP-SNP interaction associated with hypertension. Genotype dataset of eight SNPs of renin-angiotensin system genes for 130 non-hypertension and 313 hypertension subjects were included. Without SNP-SNP interaction, most individual SNPs were non-significant difference between the hypertension and non-hypertension groups. For SNP-SNP interaction, PSO can select the SNP combinations involving different SNP numbers, namely the best SNP barcodes, to show the maximum frequency difference between non-hypertension and hypertension groups. After computation, the best PSO-generated SNP barcodes were dominant in non-hypertension in terms of the occurrences of frequency differences between non-hypertension and hypertension groups. The OR values of the best SNP barcodes involving 2-8 SNPs were 0.705-0.334, suggesting that these SNP barcodes were protective against hypertension. In conclusion, this study demonstrated that non-significant SNPs may generate the joint effect in association study. Our proposed PSO algorithm is effective to identify the best protective SNP barcodes against hypertension.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • Epistasis, Genetic*
  • Genetic Predisposition to Disease
  • Genotype
  • Humans
  • Hypertension / genetics*
  • Models, Biological
  • Odds Ratio
  • Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide*
  • Renin-Angiotensin System / genetics*
  • Reproducibility of Results