Genetic effect, genetic correlation, and interaction with environmental exposure for complex diseases

Complex diseases and traits are often affected by many genes and they might share similar genetic effect on a set of genes, and their effect may vary by environment exposure and lifestyles. Analyzing related diseases and traits together will improve our understanding of disease mechanisms and provide better prediction accuracy for future disease risk. This study will focus on chronic conditions that affect many of the older population, including cognitive functions, mental health disorders, type-2 diabetes, heart diseases, lung functions, asthma, allergy, kidney functions and age-related macular degeneration. We will study genetic effect of these chronic conditions, their shared effect with chronic inflammation status such as obesity and C-reactive protein, and their effect modification by environmental exposure and lifestyles including dietary habits. We will then investigate how these genetic variants affect functions including DNA methylation and plasma metabolomics.