ИСТИНА

Biochemical pathways underlying protein N-glycosylation are well known, but the biological networks regulating these pathways remain poorly understood. Defining the genetic control of N-glycosylation of proteins of human blood plasma (“plasma N-glycome”) can shed light on the regulation of this complex process. To date, a series of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of human blood plasma protein N-glycosylation have been published reporting more than 30 genetic loci affecting protein glycosylation. These studies used a regression model under which glycome traits were analyzed independently of each other. However, it has been previously demonstrated that multivariate genetic association analysis of N-glycome, that is, a joint analysis of multiple glycomic traits, has higher power for loci detection. In this work we aimed to perform the first multivariate GWAS of total plasma N-glycome.