Identifying Gene-Environment Interactions With Robust Marginal Bayesian Variable Selection

In high-throughput genetics studies, an important aim is to identify gene-environment interactions associated with the clinical outcomes. Recently, multiple marginal penalization methods have been developed and shown to be effective in GxE studies. However, within the Bayesian framework, marginal variable selection has not received much attention. In this study, we propose a novel marginal Bayesian variable selection method for GxE studies. In particular, our marginal Bayesian method is robust to data contamination and outliers in the outcome variables. With the incorporation of spike-and-slab priors, we have implemented the Gibbs sampler based on Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). The proposed method outperforms a number of alternatives in extensive simulation studies. The utility of the marginal robust Bayesian variable selection method has been further demonstrated in the case studies using data from the Nurse Health Study (NHS). Some of the identified main and interaction effects from the real data analysis have important biological implications.