| 1. |
- Abadie, J., et al.
(författare)
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All-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in the full S5 LIGO data
- 2012
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Ingår i: Physical Review D (Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology). - 1550-2368. ; 85:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We report on an all-sky search for periodic gravitational waves in the frequency band 50-800 Hz and with the frequency time derivative in the range of 0 through -6 x 10(-9) Hz/s. Such a signal could be produced by a nearby spinning and slightly nonaxisymmetric isolated neutron star in our Galaxy. After recent improvements in the search program that yielded a 10x increase in computational efficiency, we have searched in two years of data collected during LIGO's fifth science run and have obtained the most sensitive all-sky upper limits on gravitational-wave strain to date. Near 150 Hz our upper limit on worst-case linearly polarized strain amplitude h(0) is 1 x 10(-24), while at the high end of our frequency range we achieve a worst-case upper limit of 3.8 x 10(-24) for all polarizations and sky locations. These results constitute a factor of 2 improvement upon previously published data. A new detection pipeline utilizing a loosely coherent algorithm was able to follow up weaker outliers, increasing the volume of space where signals can be detected by a factor of 10, but has not revealed any gravitational-wave signals. The pipeline has been tested for robustness with respect to deviations from the model of an isolated neutron star, such as caused by a low-mass or long-period binary companion.
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| 2. |
- Abadie, J., et al.
(författare)
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Implementation and testing of the first prompt search for gravitational wave transients with electromagnetic counterparts
- 2012
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Ingår i: Astronomy & Astrophysics. - : EDP Sciences. - 0004-6361 .- 1432-0746. ; 539
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aims. A transient astrophysical event observed in both gravitational wave (GW) and electromagnetic (EM) channels would yield rich scientific rewards. A first program initiating EM follow-ups to possible transient GW events has been developed and exercised by the LIGO and Virgo community in association with several partners. In this paper, we describe and evaluate the methods used to promptly identify and localize GW event candidates and to request images of targeted sky locations. Methods. During two observing periods (Dec. 17, 2009 to Jan. 8, 2010 and Sep. 2 to Oct. 20, 2010), a low-latency analysis pipeline was used to identify GW event candidates and to reconstruct maps of possible sky locations. A catalog of nearby galaxies and Milky Way globular clusters was used to select the most promising sky positions to be imaged, and this directional information was delivered to EM observatories with time lags of about thirty minutes. A Monte Carlo simulation has been used to evaluate the low-latency GW pipeline's ability to reconstruct source positions correctly. Results. For signals near the detection threshold, our low-latency algorithms often localized simulated GW burst signals to tens of square degrees, while neutron star/neutron star inspirals and neutron star/black hole inspirals were localized to a few hundred square degrees. Localization precision improves for moderately stronger signals. The correct sky location of signals well above threshold and originating from nearby galaxies may be observed with similar to 50% or better probability with a few pointings of wide-field telescopes.
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| 3. |
- Abadie, J., et al.
(författare)
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Search for gravitational waves from low mass compact binary coalescence in LIGO's sixth science run and Virgo's science runs 2 and 3
- 2012
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Ingår i: Physical Review D (Particles, Fields, Gravitation and Cosmology). - 1550-2368. ; 85:8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We report on a search for gravitational waves from coalescing compact binaries using LIGO and Virgo observations between July 7, 2009, and October 20, 2010. We searched for signals from binaries with total mass between 2 and 25M(circle dot); this includes binary neutron stars, binary black holes, and binaries consisting of a black hole and neutron star. The detectors were sensitive to systems up to 40 Mpc distant for binary neutron stars, and further for higher mass systems. No gravitational-wave signals were detected. We report upper limits on the rate of compact binary coalescence as a function of total mass, including the results from previous LIGO and Virgo observations. The cumulative 90% confidence rate upper limits of the binary coalescence of binary neutron star, neutron star-black hole, and binary black hole systems are 1.3 x 10(-4), 3.1 x 10(-5), and 6.4 x 10(-6) Mpc(-3) yr(-1), respectively. These upper limits are up to a factor 1.4 lower than previously derived limits. We also report on results from a blind injection challenge.
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| 4. |
- Grundberg, Elin, et al.
(författare)
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Mapping cis- and trans-regulatory effects across multiple tissues in twins.
- 2012
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Ingår i: Nature Genetics. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1061-4036 .- 1546-1718. ; 44:10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sequence-based variation in gene expression is a key driver of disease risk. Common variants regulating expression in cis have been mapped in many expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) studies, typically in single tissues from unrelated individuals. Here, we present a comprehensive analysis of gene expression across multiple tissues conducted in a large set of mono- and dizygotic twins that allows systematic dissection of genetic (cis and trans) and non-genetic effects on gene expression. Using identity-by-descent estimates, we show that at least 40% of the total heritable cis effect on expression cannot be accounted for by common cis variants, a finding that reveals the contribution of low-frequency and rare regulatory variants with respect to both transcriptional regulation and complex trait susceptibility. We show that a substantial proportion of gene expression heritability is trans to the structural gene, and we identify several replicating trans variants that act predominantly in a tissue-restricted manner and may regulate the transcription of many genes.
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| 5. |
- Kurilshikov, Alexander, et al.
(författare)
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Large-scale association analyses identify host factors influencing human gut microbiome composition
- 2021
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Ingår i: Nature Genetics. - : Nature Publishing Group. - 1061-4036 .- 1546-1718. ; 53:2, s. 156-165
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- To study the effect of host genetics on gut microbiome composition, the MiBioGen consortium curated and analyzed genome-wide genotypes and 16S fecal microbiome data from 18,340 individuals (24 cohorts). Microbial composition showed high variability across cohorts: only 9 of 410 genera were detected in more than 95% of samples. A genome-wide association study of host genetic variation regarding microbial taxa identified 31 loci affecting the microbiome at a genome-wide significant (P < 5 x 10(-8)) threshold. One locus, the lactase (LCT) gene locus, reached study-wide significance (genome-wide association study signal: P = 1.28 x 10(-20)), and it showed an age-dependent association with Bifidobacterium abundance. Other associations were suggestive (1.95 x 10(-10) < P < 5 x 10(-8)) but enriched for taxa showing high heritability and for genes expressed in the intestine and brain. A phenome-wide association study and Mendelian randomization identified enrichment of microbiome trait loci in the metabolic, nutrition and environment domains and suggested the microbiome might have causal effects in ulcerative colitis and rheumatoid arthritis.
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| 6. |
- Nica, Alexandra C, et al.
(författare)
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The architecture of gene regulatory variation across multiple human tissues : the MuTHER study.
- 2011
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Ingår i: PLOS Genetics. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1553-7390 .- 1553-7404. ; 7:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- While there have been studies exploring regulatory variation in one or more tissues, the complexity of tissue-specificity in multiple primary tissues is not yet well understood. We explore in depth the role of cis-regulatory variation in three human tissues: lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCL), skin, and fat. The samples (156 LCL, 160 skin, 166 fat) were derived simultaneously from a subset of well-phenotyped healthy female twins of the MuTHER resource. We discover an abundance of cis-eQTLs in each tissue similar to previous estimates (858 or 4.7% of genes). In addition, we apply factor analysis (FA) to remove effects of latent variables, thus more than doubling the number of our discoveries (1,822 eQTL genes). The unique study design (Matched Co-Twin Analysis--MCTA) permits immediate replication of eQTLs using co-twins (93%-98%) and validation of the considerable gain in eQTL discovery after FA correction. We highlight the challenges of comparing eQTLs between tissues. After verifying previous significance threshold-based estimates of tissue-specificity, we show their limitations given their dependency on statistical power. We propose that continuous estimates of the proportion of tissue-shared signals and direct comparison of the magnitude of effect on the fold change in expression are essential properties that jointly provide a biologically realistic view of tissue-specificity. Under this framework we demonstrate that 30% of eQTLs are shared among the three tissues studied, while another 29% appear exclusively tissue-specific. However, even among the shared eQTLs, a substantial proportion (10%-20%) have significant differences in the magnitude of fold change between genotypic classes across tissues. Our results underline the need to account for the complexity of eQTL tissue-specificity in an effort to assess consequences of such variants for complex traits.
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| 7. |
- Drong, Alexander W, et al.
(författare)
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The presence of methylation quantitative trait loci indicates a direct genetic influence on the level of DNA methylation in adipose tissue.
- 2013
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 8:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Genetic variants that associate with DNA methylation at CpG sites (methylation quantitative trait loci, meQTLs) offer a potential biological mechanism of action for disease associated SNPs. We investigated whether meQTLs exist in abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) and if CpG methylation associates with metabolic syndrome (MetSyn) phenotypes. We profiled 27,718 genomic regions in abdominal SAT samples of 38 unrelated individuals using differential methylation hybridization (DMH) together with genotypes at 5,227,243 SNPs and expression of 17,209 mRNA transcripts. Validation and replication of significant meQTLs was pursued in an independent cohort of 181 female twins. We find that, at 5% false discovery rate, methylation levels of 149 DMH regions associate with at least one SNP in a ±500 kilobase cis-region in our primary study. We sought to validate 19 of these in the replication study and find that five of these significantly associate with the corresponding meQTL SNPs from the primary study. We find that none of the 149 meQTL top SNPs is a significant expression quantitative trait locus in our expression data, but we observed association between expression levels of two mRNA transcripts and cis-methylation status. Our results indicate that DNA CpG methylation in abdominal SAT is partly under genetic control. This study provides a starting point for future investigations of DNA methylation in adipose tissue.
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