Jennifer Asimit

I am a MRC Career Development Award research fellow (as of Oct 2018) and joined the MRC Biostatistics Unit in October 2016. My main aim is to develop statistical methods that improve our genetic understanding of cardiometabolic traits through multiple traits and diverse poplation studies, though these methods may be applied to a wide range of disorders/traits. Previously, I held a MRC Methodology Research fellowship (now known as MRC Skills Development Fellowship) at the Wellcome Trust Sanger institute.   ORCID: 0000-0002-4857-2249

Selected Papers

• JL Asimit, DB Rainbow, MD Fortune, NF Grinberg, LS Wicker, C Wallace. (2019). Stochastic search and joint fine-mapping increases accuracy and identifies previously unreported associations in immune-mediated diseases. Nature Communications 10 (1), 3216.
• Y Xue, M Mezzavilla, M Haber, S McCarthy, Y Chen, VNarasimhan, A Gilly, Q Ayub, V Colonna, L Southam, C Finan, A Massala, H Chheda, P Palta, G Ritchie, J Asimit, G Dedoussis, P Gasparini, A Palotie, S Ripatti, N Soranzo, D Toniolo, FL Wilson, R Durbin, C Tyler-Smith, E Zeggini. (2017). Enrichment of low-frequency functional variants revealed by whole-genome sequencing of multiple isolated European populations. Nature Communications, 8, 15927.
• JL Asimit, F Payne, AP Morris, HJ Cordell, I Barroso (2017). A two-stage inter-rater approach for enrichment testing of variants associated with multiple traits, European Journal of Human Genetics,25, 341–349.
• M Horikoshi, L Pasquali, S Wiltshire, JR Huyghe, A Mahajan, JL Asimit, T Ferreira, AE Locke, NR Robertson, X Wang, X Sim, H Fujita, K Hara, R Young, W Zhang, S Choi, H Chen, I Kaur, F Takeuchi, P Fontanillas, D Thuillier, L Yengo, JE Below, CHT Tam, Y Wu, T2D-GENES Consortium, Goncalo Abecasis, D Altshuler, GI Bell, J Blangero, NP Burtt, R Duggirala, JC Florez, CL Hanis, M Seielstad, G Atzmon, JCN Chan, RCW Ma, P Froguel, JG Wilson, D Bharadwaj, J Dupuis, JB Meigs, YS Cho, T Park, JS Kooner, JC Chambers, D Saleheen, T Kadowaki, ES Tai, KL Mohlke, N J Cox, J Ferrer, E Zeggini, N Kato, YY Teo, M Boehnke, MI McCarthy, and AP Morris (2016). Transancestral fine-mapping of four type 2 diabetes susceptibility loci highlights potential causal regulatory mechanisms. Human Molecular Genetics.
• JL Asimit, K Hatzikotoulas, M McCarthy, AP Morris, E Zeggini (2016). Trans-ethnic study design approaches for fine-mapping, European Journal of Human Genetics. 24, 1330–1336.
• JL Asimit, K Panoutsopoulou, E Wheeler, SI Berndt, the GIANT consortium, the arcOGEN consortium, HJ Cordell, AP Morris, E Zeggini, I Barroso (2015). A Bayesian approach to the overlap analysis of epidemiologically linked traits, Genetic Epidemiology, 39, 624-634.
• D Gurdasani, T Carstensen, F Tekola-Ayele, L Pagani, I Tachmazidou, K Hatzikotoulas, S Karthikeyan, L Iles, A Choudhury, GRS Ritchie, Y Xue, JL Asimit, RN Nsubuga, EH Young, C Pomilla, K Kivinen, K Rockett, A Kamali, AP Doumatey, G Asiki, J Seeley, F Sisay-Joof, M Jallow, S Tollman, E Mekonnen, R Ekong, T Oljira, N Bradman, K Bojang, M Ramsay, A Adeyemo, E Bekele, A Motala, S Norri, F Pirie, P Kaleebu, D Kwiatkowski, C Tyler-Smith, C Rotimi, MS Sandhu, E Zeggini (2015). The African Genome Variation Project shapes medical genetics in Africa, Nature, 517, 327—332.
• R Magi, JL Asimit, AG Day-Williams, E Zeggini and AP Morris. (2012). Genome-wide association analysis of imputed rare variants: application to seven common complex diseases, Genetic Epidemiology, 36, 785—796.
• JL Asimit, AG Day-Williams, AP Morris and E Zeggini (2012). ARIEL and AMELIA: Testing for an accumulation of rare variants using next-generation sequencing data, Human Heredity, 73, 84—94.
• JL Asimit, AG Day-Williams, L Zgaga, I Rudan, V Boraska and E Zeggini (2012). An evaluation of different meta-analysis approaches in the presence of allelic heterogeneity, European Journal of Human Genetics, 20, 709—712.
• MC Lopes, C Joyce, GRS Ritchie, SL John, F Cunningham, JL Asimit, and E Zeggini (2012). A combined functional annotation score for non-synonymous variants, Human Heredity, 73, 47—51.
• JL Asimit, IL. Andrulis, and SB Bull (2011). Regression models, scan statistics and reappearance probabilities to detect regions of association between gene expression and copy number, Statistics in Medicine, 30, 1157—1178.

  Refereed Book Chapter

• JL Asimit and AP Morris (2015). Collapsing approaches for the association analysis of rare variants, In Assessing rare variation in complex traits: Design and analysis of genetic studies, Springer-Verlag, New York, 135-148.

  Software Development

1. MFM (Multinomial Fine-mapping)
2. COMET (Corrected Overlap and Marginal Enrichment Test)
3. BOAT (Bayesian Overlap Analysis Tool)
4. ARIEL (Accumulation of Rare variants Integrated and Extended Locus-specific test)
5. AMELIA (Allele Matching Empirical Locus-specific Integrated Association test)