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Cardone, K. M.

Publications and source records attributed to Cardone, K. M..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

PMBB Geno-Pheno Toolkit: A suite of scalable, reproducible pipelines for cross-biobank association analyses

SummaryElectronic health record (EHR)-linked biobanks generate unprecedented genomic and phenotypic datasets, but their scientific utility is constrained by data fragmentation across institutional silos and incompatible computing infrastructures, forcing researchers to rewrite ad-hoc scripts for each new environment. We present the PMBB Geno-Pheno Toolkit, a suite of modular Nextflow pipelines for biobank-scale association analyses. This note focuses on the toolkits SAIGE family of pipelines -- supporting genome-wide (GWAS), exome-wide (ExWAS), and phenome-wide (PheWAS) association testing -- together with the companion GWAMA and ExWAS meta-analysis pipelines that enable cross-biobank replication. All components are containerized (Docker/Apptainer) and orchestrated with Nextflow, allowing the same workflows to run unmodified on local HPC clusters, cloud platforms, and the All of Us Research Workbench. Complementary toolkit pipelines for PLINK-based GWAS, polygenic scoring, LD-based clumping, and phenotype harmonization are also available and briefly noted. AvailabilityThe PMBB Geno-Pheno Toolkit is freely available at https://github.com/PMBB-Informatics-and-Genomics/pmbb-geno-pheno-toolkit under MIT open-source license.

bioinformatics↗

Characterization of a Novel Hyper-Variable Variable Number Tandem Repeat in the Dopamine Transporter Gene (SLC6A3)

The dopamine transporter gene, SLC6A3, has received substantial attention in genetic association studies of various phenotypes. Although some variable number tandem repeats (VNTRs) present in SLC6A3 have been tested in genetic association studies, results have not been consistent. VNTRs in SLC6A3 that have not been examined genetically were characterized. Tandem Repeat Annotation Library (TRAL) was used to characterize the VNTRs of 64 unrelated long-read haplotype-phased SLC6A3 sequences. Sequence similarity of each repeat unit of the five VNTRs is reported, along with the correlations of SNP-SNP, SNP-VNTR and VNTR-VNTR alleles across the gene. One of these VNTRs is a novel hyper-VNTR (hyVNTR) in intron 8 of SLC6A3, which contains a range of 3.4-133.4 repeat copies and has a consensus sequence length of 38bp, with 82% G+C content. The 38-base repeat was predicted to form G-quadruplexes in silico and was confirmed by circular dichroism spectroscopy. Additionally, this hyVNTR contains multiple putative binding sites for PRDM9, which, in combination with low levels of linkage disequilibrium around the hyVNTR, suggests it might be a recombination hotspot. Summary BlurbThis VNTR has a heterozygosity value of 0.93, forms G-tetrads, and is in low linkage disequilibrium with surrounding sequence, making it a new site for genetic analysis.

genomics↗