Need Help?

Sporadic ALS Australia Systems Genomics Consortium (SALSA-SGC)

In 2016 we established the Sporadic ALS Australia Systems Genomics Consortium (SALSA-SGC) funded by the Ice Bucket Challenge Grant administered by the Motor Neurone Disease Research Institute of Australia. The goals of the SALSA-SGC are to collect biological samples from clinics across Australia with matched in depth clinical and self-report phenotypes and to generate multiple levels of genetic and genomic data. In this first data generation exercise of the SALSA-SGC the majority of the samples were collected prior to the formal establishment of SALSA-SGC from clinics across Australia.

Briefly, the cohort includes the University of Sydney’s Australian Motor Neuron Disease DNA Bank (MND Bank) cohort recruited April 2000 to June 2011), with study protocol approved by the Sydney South West Area Health Service Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC). Cases were recruited from around Australia via state-based MND associations with diagnosis verified by a neurologist. The remainder of the cases were recruited from clinics across Australia between 2015 and 2017 under HREC approvals from Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, Macquarie University Multidisciplinary Motor Neurone Disease Clinic,  Calvary Health Care Bethlehem in Melbourne , Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth, and from 2016 under HREC approvals at each site for the sporadic ALS Australia Systems Genomics Consortium (SALSA-SGC). The ALS cases were diagnosed with definite or probable ALS according to the revised El Escorial criteria. Some controls were recruited as either partners or friends of patients, healthy individuals free of neuromuscular diseases.


We are providing GWAS and MWAS data in this dataset.

Individual level GWAS data were generated using Illumina Infinium CoreExome-24 version 1.1 chips for N= 846 cases and N=665 controls. Individual MWAS data was generated using the Illumina Human methylation 450K array for N=782 cases and N=613 controls.

There 1315 individuals where GWAS and MWAS data has been generated and is available.

Further information on these data sets can be found:

Paper 1: Restuadi, R, Garton, FC, Benyamin, B, Lin, T, et al. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Genetic Correlation with Cognitive Performance, educational attainment and schizophrenia: evidence from polygenic risk score analysis. (submitted)

Paper 2: Nabais, MF, Lin, T, Benyamin, B et al. Significant out-of-sample classification from methylation profile scoring for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. 2020. NPJ genomic medicine. 5(10).

Files provided in this submission include:

GWAS:

This folder contains QCed genotype for the Australian ALS case-control cohort. Contains PLINK files for genotyping data (not imputed yet).

The individuals selected here have:

No ancestry QC yet

MWAS:

This folder contains the IDAT and post-QC normalized DNAm (beta) for the Australian ALS case-control cohort.

2019_AUS_ALS_PCTG_DNAm.tar.gz - IDATS for 1315 individuals analyzed in the MWAS study normalized_beta_values - Binary files (created with the OSCA software) containing information on the individuals, probes and the DNAm (beta) values obtained after QC

phenotype_file - contains all the covariates analysed in the MWAS including: case-control status, coded 0 = Control and 1 = ALS, predicted age, predicted cell-type proportions, predicted smoking scores, slide and chip position and sex

Important Notes:

The DNAm data were normalized together with samples that were not part of this ALS case/control study and thus, the normalization procedure may not be 100% reproducible using only the IDAT files uploaded here.

Summary data has been made publicly available and can be accessed directly:

Data collection and sample processing were performed at several clinics across Australia. Genotyping and DNA methylation arrays were performed by the Human Studies Unit, at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (University of Queensland). Quality control of the genotypic, phenotypic and DNA methylation data was done by the Program of Complex Traits Genomics, at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (University of Queensland).