JASS: command line and web interface for the joint analysis of GWAS results

Abstract

Genome-wide association study (GWAS) has been the driving force for identifying association between genetic variants and human phenotypes. Thousands of GWAS summary statistics covering a broad range of human traits and diseases are now publicly available. These GWAS have proven their utility for a range of secondary analyses, including in particular the joint analysis of multiple phenotypes to identify new associated genetic variants. However, although several methods have been proposed, there are very few large-scale applications published so far because of challenges in implementing these methods on real data. Here, we present JASS (Joint Analysis of Summary Statistics), a polyvalent Python package that addresses this need. Our package incorporates recently developed joint tests such as the omnibus approach and various weighted sum of Zscore tests while solving all practical and computational barriers for large-scale multivariate analysis of GWAS summary statistics. This includes data cleaning and harmonization tools, an efficient algorithm for fast derivation of joint statistics, an optimized data management process and a web interface for exploration purposes. Both benchmark analyses and real data applications demonstrated the robustness and strong potential of JASS for the detection of new associated genetic variants. Our package is freely available at https://gitlab.pasteur.fr/statisticalgenetics/jass.