Integrating Genomic Annotations and Traits Dependencies for single-nucleotide polymorphisms Prioritization with Causal Concept Bottleneck Models
TL;DR
A modeling approach that combines genomic annotations with known cross-trait relations by leveraging Causally Reliable Concept Bottleneck Models (C2BM), a deep learning architecture that factors the joint trait distribution over a graph of interpretable concepts allows trait predictions to leverage information from other observed traits in addition to genomic inputs.
Abstract
Predicting common traits from single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) data is challenging due to polygenicity, small effect sizes, and the presence of potentially mediated or spurious cross-trait associations. We propose a modeling approach that combines genomic annotations with known cross-trait relations by leveraging Causally Reliable Concept Bottleneck Models (C2BM), a deep learning architecture that factors the joint trait distribution over a graph of interpretable concepts. This design allows trait predictions to leverage information from other observed traits in addition to genomic inputs. Furthermore, the interpretable architecture of the model enables us to investigate how specific trait–trait relationships influence SNP-level predictions. We evaluate the approach on a multi-trait GWAS dataset covering five traits and show that C2BM improves predictions when ground-truth labels for related traits are available. Moreover, by analyzing variations in how trait–trait relationships influence predictions, we postulate that such differences may reflect the presence or absence of shared genetic mechanisms or indirect effects.