%0 Journal Article
%T Whole Blood Gene Expression and Atrial Fibrillation: The Framingham Heart Study
%A Honghuang Lin
%A Xiaoyan Yin
%A Kathryn L. Lunetta
%A Jos¨¦e Dupuis
%A David D. McManus
%A Steven A. Lubitz
%A Jared W. Magnani
%A Roby Joehanes
%A Peter J. Munson
%A Martin G. Larson
%A Daniel Levy
%A Patrick T. Ellinor
%A Emelia J. Benjamin
%J PLOS ONE
%D 2014
%I Public Library of Science (PLoS)
%R 10.1371/journal.pone.0096794
%X Background Atrial fibrillation (AF) involves substantial electrophysiological, structural and contractile remodeling. We hypothesize that characterizing gene expression might uncover important pathways related to AF. Methods and Results We performed genome-wide whole blood transcriptomic profiling (Affymetrix Human Exon 1.0 ST Array) of 2446 participants (mean age 66¡À9 years, 55% women) from the Offspring cohort of Framingham Heart Study. The study included 177 participants with prevalent AF, 143 with incident AF during up to 7 years follow up, and 2126 participants with no AF. We identified seven genes statistically significantly up-regulated with prevalent AF. The most significant gene, PBX1 (P = 2.8¡Á10£¿7), plays an important role in cardiovascular development. We integrated differential gene expression with gene-gene interaction information to identify several signaling pathways possibly involved in AF-related transcriptional regulation. We did not detect any statistically significant transcriptomic associations with incident AF. Conclusion We examined associations of gene expression with AF in a large community-based cohort. Our study revealed several genes and signaling pathways that are potentially involved in AF-related transcriptional regulation.
%U http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0096794