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Pleiotropy

Definition
AI-generated

Pleiotropy is the phenomenon whereby one genetic variant, gene, or locus affects more than one trait or disease.

Topics
Core genetics
Related
Antagonistic Pleiotropy Colocalization Genetic Correlation

Why it matters in GWAS

Many GWAS loci associate with multiple phenotypes; distinguishing shared biology from statistical artifacts (LD, colliders) and modeling cross-trait structure improves interpretation and follow-up.

Example usage

"The lead SNP showed strong pleiotropy across metabolic traits, motivating a multi-trait GWAS and genetic correlation analysis."

Antagonistic Pleiotropy Colocalization Genetic Correlation Horizontal Pleiotropy Horizontal Pleiotropy (MR) Latent Genetic Factors in Pleiotropy Matrix Factorization for Pleiotropy Multi-Trait GWAS Phenome-Wide Association Study (PheWAS) Pleiotropy Dissection Vertical Pleiotropy
Related-term network

Click any node to open that term page.

Node order. The current term is first. Next come every page linked from Related terms, in the same top-to-bottom order as that list. Then new terms appear in two-hop layers: for each of those direct neighbors (in that same order), their related terms are appended if not already listed. A third pass does the same for two-hop nodes. The walk stops when a fixed maximum number of nodes is reached.

References

  • Jee J, et al. (2026). The pleiotropic landscape of the human genome. Nat Rev Genet. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-025-00908-0
  • Solovieff N, et al. (2013). Pleiotropy in complex traits: challenges and strategies. Nat Rev Genet.
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