Genetic Correlation Guides Mega-Analysis Identifying Genes

Mullis et al. (published Feb. 27, 2026) implement Haseman–Elston regression to estimate genetic correlations among 7,233 phenotypes across eleven Diversity Outbred mouse studies. They used correlation-driven clustering to perform mega-analyses that discovered 884 QTL for 383 meta-phenotypes, explained an average 40.36% of genetic variance, and nominated candidate genes such as Cdkn2b for aorta extracellular matrix and implicated pulmonary neuroendocrine cell signaling in lung pathophenotypes.