The ENIGMA Consortium is an international effort by leaders worldwide. The Consortium brings together researchers in imaging genomics, neurology and psychiatry, to understand brain structure and function, based on MRI, DTI, fMRI, genetic data and many patient populations.
The best return on our research investments will come from combining our data to achieve the large samples necessary to detect the modest gene effect sizes that we now know are the rule rather the exception for complex traits.
The ENIGMA Consortium has several goals:
- to create a network of like-minded individuals, interested in pushing forward the field of imaging genetics
- to ensure promising findings are replicated via member collaborations, in order to satisfy the mandates of most journals
- to share ideas, algorithms, data, and information on promising findings or methods
- to facilitate training, including workshops and conferences on key methods and emerging directions in imaging genetics.
Data sharing with other members of the ENIGMA Consortium is optional and by no means a requirement of joining the consortium.
Our follow up letter and initial letter of inquiry are included below.
INITIAL LETTER OF INQUIRY
Dear Colleagues,At the recent psychiatric genetics meeting in San Diego it became apparent that there are now a number of groups around the world conducting brain imaging studies of normal individuals and also obtaining (or planning to obtain) genomewide association scan data. The finished datasets represent enormous investment in both phenotyping and genotyping, and every group will want to get its own paper out to justify their investment. Unfortunately, however, the power calculations do not change just because the phenotype is more expensive and it is likely that individual studies will not be large enough to find significant SNP effects; and even if they do it will be necessary to replicate them on independent samples. Just as it has proved necessary to form GWAS consortia for other diseases and continuous phenotypes, it seems likely that the best return on our research investments will come from combining our data to achieve the large N’s necessary to detect the modest gene effect sizes that we now know are the rule rather the exception for complex traits.This email is therefore to gauge your interest in joining a network of researchers interested in brain MRI/GWAS studies. The initial goal can be quite informal – to make a database available to all, of who has what, to enable replication studies, and some joint analyses. A longer term goal might be to form a more formalised GWAS consortium that will need coordination to standardize phenotypes, imputation of SNP sets etc.As a first step can you please just reply to this email to indicate interest, hostility, or otherwise. If there is sufficient interest we will send around a spreadsheet to get a record of who has what phenotypes and genotypes. If there are other consortia with the same aim already in existence, or nascent, please let us know. Likewise, if there are people not on the To list above who might be interested, please forward this to them or let us know their names.Thanks and warm regards,Paul Thompson
|
FOLLOW UP LETTER TO INTERESTED PARTIES
Dear Colleagues,Thank you all for your emails. We are delighted by the universally positive response to our suggestion to form a network of researchers [contemplating] undertaking GWAS studies of brain imaging phenotypes. As a first step we have set up a password-protected website where you may record the details of your study so that others in the network can see who is doing what and form alliances and mutually interesting projects accordingly. In the longer term we might consider forming ad hoc consortia for meta-analysis of different MRI phenotypes. Every network needs a catchy acronym, so we came up with ENIGMA - Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics by Meta-Analysis.So, 2 questions:
|
