Does standard adjustment for genomic population structure capture direct genetic effects?

Abstract

Contemporary genomic studies of complex traits, such as genome-wide association studies (GWASs) and polygenic index (PGI) analyses, often use the principal components of the genotype matrix (PCs) to adjust for population stratification. In this paper, we explore the extent to which we may be discounting direct genetic effects by adjusting for PCs. Using family-based models that control for parental genotype (obtained via Mendelian imputation), we test whether PCs have a direct genetic effect on nine complex phenotypes in the White British subsample of the UK Biobank. Further, we assess the extent to which estimates of polygenic effects meaningfully change when adjusting for PCs in within-family models. Across the nine traits, within-family effects of the top 40 PCs are highly similar to their population effects, suggesting that standard PC adjustments diminish, albeit to a small degree, detectable signals of direct genetic effects. Within family models also confirm that PCs have significant marginal effects on a few traits, most consistently, height and educational attainment. Nonetheless, the variance explained by the effects of PCs is modest, and adjusting for PCs does not appear to affect the magnitude and significance of PGI effects in within-family models.