The UK Biobank Resource with Deep Phenotyping and Genomic Data

Overview

Journal Nature

Specialty Science

Date 2018 Oct 12

PMID 30305743

Citations 3477

Authors

Clare Bycroft

Colin Freeman

Desislava Petkova

Gavin Band

Lloyd T Elliott

Kevin Sharp

Allan Motyer

Damjan Vukcevic

Olivier Delaneau

Jared OConnell

Adrian Cortes

Samantha Welsh

Alan Young

Mark Effingham

Gil McVean

Stephen Leslie

Naomi Allen

Peter Donnelly

Jonathan Marchini

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The UK Biobank project is a prospective cohort study with deep genetic and phenotypic data collected on approximately 500,000 individuals from across the United Kingdom, aged between 40 and 69 at recruitment. The open resource is unique in its size and scope. A rich variety of phenotypic and health-related information is available on each participant, including biological measurements, lifestyle indicators, biomarkers in blood and urine, and imaging of the body and brain. Follow-up information is provided by linking health and medical records. Genome-wide genotype data have been collected on all participants, providing many opportunities for the discovery of new genetic associations and the genetic bases of complex traits. Here we describe the centralized analysis of the genetic data, including genotype quality, properties of population structure and relatedness of the genetic data, and efficient phasing and genotype imputation that increases the number of testable variants to around 96 million. Classical allelic variation at 11 human leukocyte antigen genes was imputed, resulting in the recovery of signals with known associations between human leukocyte antigen alleles and many diseases.

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