View ASHG posters from the T2D Knowledge Portal team

Did you miss the American Society of Human Genetics 2016 Annual Meeting last month in Vancouver? Or did you attend, but weren’t able to get to our posters among the hundreds that were there? 

Now you can catch up on everything you missed from the Portal team. We’ve uploaded our posters to the open access publishing platform F1000Research, where you can view or download them. The Portal team presented four posters:

1. Automated, scalable quality control of heterogeneous exome sequence data. This poster presented by Ryan Koesterer, a member of the Analysis Team of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership Data Coordinating Center (AMP-DCC), describes a new, scalable method for quality control for exome sequence data, applied to data before they are incorporated into the Portal. 

Citation: Koesterer R, von Grotthuss M, Flannick J et al. Automated, scalable quality control of heterogeneous exome sequence data [v1; not peer reviewed]. F1000Research 2016, 5:2609 (poster) (doi: 10.7490/f1000research.1113354.1)

2. The Type 2 Diabetes Knowledge Portal: a paradigm for the democratization of human genetic information. This poster, from Portal content and community manager Maria Costanzo, presents an introduction to the Portal: its purpose, its content, and what kinds of questions it allows you to ask.

Citation: Costanzo MC and Accelerating Medicines Partnership: Type 2 Diabetes. The type 2 diabetes knowledge portal: a paradigm for the democratization of human genetic information [v1; not peer reviewed]. F1000Research 2016, 5:2607 (poster) (doi: 10.7490/f1000research.1113352.1)

3. A software platform facilitating community analyses of genetic datasets for complex disease. This poster from Benjamin Alexander, on the Portal software engineering team, describes the tools in the Portal that allow you to do both forward and reverse genetic analysis and even perform custom association analysis.

Citation: Alexander B, Duby M, Sanders M et al. A software platform facilitating community analyses of genetic datasets for complex disease [v1; not peer reviewed]. F1000Research 2016, 5:2608 (poster) (doi: 10.7490/f1000research.1113353.1)

4. Mapping variants to amino-acid changes in three-dimensional protein space improves aggregate association test power and suggests mechanisms of action. This poster, presented by Portal computational biologist Marcin von Grotthuss, illustrates a new method for evaluating the significance of variants by considering the protein structural context of the amino acids they encode. A long-term goal is to incorporate this analysis into the Portal.

von Grotthuss M, Florez JC, Flannick J et al. Mapping variants to amino-acid changes in three-dimensional protein space improves aggregate association test power and suggests mechanisms of action [v1; not peer reviewed]. F1000Research 2016, 5:2610 (poster) (doi: 10.7490/f1000research.1113355.1)

We hope you find these posters informative! Please let us know if you have any questions or suggestions.

New and updated data in the T2D Knowledge Portal

As members of the T2D Knowledge Portal team arrive in Vancouver for the American Society of Human Genetics meeting, we are pleased to announce that we have added a new data set to the Portal and made extensive updates to existing data sets. 

The new data set, named “CAMP GWAS” in the Portal, comes from the MGH Cardiology and Metabolic Patient Cohort (CAMP). These data were contributed by Pfizer, Inc. as part of a public-private partnership to generate genotype data for a cardiometabolic and prediabetic cohort, and were analyzed by the Analysis Team of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership Data Coordinating Center (AMP-DCC) at the Broad Institute. The set adds individual-level genetic association data for type 2 diabetes (T2D), fasting glucose levels, and fasting insulin levels from nearly 3,500 samples to the Portal knowledgebase, and association data for more phenotypes will be added in the future.

CAMP data may be accessed on Gene and Variant pages in the Portal and via the Variant Finder, and may also be filtered and queried using the Genetic Association Interactive tool (GAIT).

Several other data sets in the Portal have been updated and improved:

• The size of the CARDIoGRAM GWAS data set has nearly doubled, now consisting of 184,305 samples, and the data analysis has been updated.
• The size of the CKDGen GWAS data set has also nearly doubled, to 133,814 samples; the data analysis has been updated; new subsets have been added that stratify serum creatinine associations by African American ancestry and stratify both serum creatinine and urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio by the presence or absence of T2D.
• The data set previously named “DIAGRAM GWAS” in the Portal has been updated and re-named “DIAGRAM Trans-ethnic meta-analysis;” its sample size has increased to 149,821. Several new subsets have been added, including gender-stratified, MetaboChip, and fine mapping data.
• The GIANT GWAS data have been updated and European cohorts have been added for BMI and height traits.
• The GLGC GWAS data set has increased in size to 188,577 samples and has been updated.
• The number of samples in the MAGIC GWAS dataset has more than doubled, to 133,010; the data have been updated, and associations with 2 hour glucose, fasting glucose, and fasting insulin have been added for MetaboChip data.

Full details about all of these data sets are available on our Data page.

Because of compatibility issues with the updated data, we have temporarily removed the “GWAS results summary” section from Gene pages of the Portal. This feature will be restored within the next week.

As always with major updates, issues or bugs may have been introduced and we may not have found all of them during our routine testing. We encourage you to let us know of any problems that you encounter in using the Portal, and we welcome your questions and suggestions.

See you at ASHG 2016!

Members of the Type 2 Diabetes Knowledge Portal team will be attending the American Society of Human Genetics meeting next week in Vancouver, BC. You can catch us nearly every day of the meeting:

Tuesday 10/18

3 PM: Nöel Burtt will be one of the speakers in an informational session on the T2D Knowledge Portal and new funding opportunities offered by the Foundation for the NIH. Complimentary snacks, beer, and wine will be served! Please pre-register here.

Wednesday 10/19

10 AM - 4 PM: Find us in the exhibit hall at booth #428. We’ll be there to answer your questions and give tours and tutorials on the Portal.

Thursday 10/20

10 AM - 4 PM: We will again be in the exhibit hall at booth #428.

2 - 3 PM: Ryan Koesterer will present his poster on an automatic, scaleable quality control method for genetic association data that improves on current “gold-standard” methods (program #1943T).

2 - 3 PM: Maria Costanzo will present her poster giving an overview of data in the Portal and the global collaborative efforts behind its aggregation (program #329T).

Friday 10/21

10 AM - 4 PM: This is our last day in the exhibit hall at booth #428.

2 - 3 PM: Marcin von Grotthuss will present his poster on improving predictions of significant variants by taking protein structure into account (program #489F).

3 - 4 PM: Ben Alexander will present his poster on the software platform that powers the T2D Knowledge Portal user interface and custom analysis tools (program #1650F).

T2D Knowledge Portal staff attending ASHG

We look forward to meeting you at ASHG! If you have questions and cannot meet us any of these times, or if you won’t be at ASHG, our mailbox is always open at help@type2diabetesgenetics.org.

Come to a T2D Knowledge Portal information session at ASHG

The American Society of Human Genetics meeting is happening in Vancouver, B.C. in a little over two weeks! The Portal team will be presenting and exhibiting at multiple venues at ASHG, and the first event will take place immediately before the conference starts: an information session including an overview of the Accelerating Medicines Partnership in Type 2 Diabetes, a progress update on T2D Knowledge Portal functionality, and information on new funding opportunities. Complimentary hors d'oeuvres, beer and wine will be served!

Information session

Tuesday - October 18, 2016

3:00 pm - 4:00 pm PDT

Fairmont Waterfront


900 Canada Place Way


Vancouver, British Columbia

Please register here for this free event, hosted by FNIH.  Contact Nicole Spear at Nspear@fnih.org with any questions.

Watch this space over the next two weeks for a complete listing of opportunities to learn about the Portal and talk with the Portal team at ASHG!