
WILLIAM S. BUSH, PHD, MS
Associate Director for Bioinformatics Research
William S. Bush, PhD, MS, is Associate Professor in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences and the Cleveland Institute for Computational Biology at Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Bush received his PhD at Vanderbilt University in Human Genetics in 2008 and then continued as a post-doctoral fellow in the Neurogenomics Training Program at Vanderbilt. Dr. Bush was recently named a Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation Scholar. As a human geneticist and bioinformatician, Dr. Bush’s research interests include understanding the functional impact of genetic variation, developing statistical and bioinformatics approaches for integrating functional genomics knowledge into genetic analysis, and the use of electronic medical records for translational research.
Featured Publications

Association of Arrhythmia-Related Genetic Variants With Phenotypes Documented in Electronic Medical Records.
Van Driest SL, Wells QS, Stallings S, Bush WS, Gordon A, Nickerson DA, Kim JH, Crosslin DR, Jarvik GP, Carrell DS, Ralston JD, Larson EB, Bielinski SJ, Olson JE, Ye Z, Kullo IJ, Abul-Husn NS, Scott SA, Bottinger E, Almoguera B, Connolly J, Chiavacci R, Hakonarson H, Rasmussen-Torvik LJ, Pan V, Persell SD, Smith M, […]

Towards a phenome-wide catalog of human clinical traits impacted by genetic ancestry.
Dumitrescu L, Restrepo NA, Goodloe R, Boston J, Farber-Eger E, Pendergrass SA, Bush WS, Crawford DC,. Racial/ethnic differences for commonly measured clinical variables are well documented, and it has been postulated that population-specific genetic factors may play a role. The genetic heterogeneity of admixed populations, such as African Americans, provides a unique opportunity to identify […]

Estimating cumulative pathway effects on risk for age-related macular degeneration using mixed linear models.
Hall JB, Cooke Bailey JN, Hoffman JD, Pericak-Vance MA, Scott WK, Kovach JL, Schwartz SG, Agarwal A, Brantley MA, Haines JL, Bush WS,. Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the leading cause of irreversible visual loss in the elderly in developed countries and typically affects more than 10% of individuals over age 80. AMD has a […]

Gene expression in cell lines from propionic acidemia patients, carrier parents, and controls.
Chapman KA, Bush WS, Zhang Z,. Propionic acidemia (PA) is an inborn of metabolism which usually presents with metabolic acidosis and accumulation of 3-hydroxypropionate among other toxins. Examining the gene expression in lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCLs) from PA patients, their carrier parents and age/sex-matched controls at normal glucose and low glucose growth conditions demonstrated differences […]

Sex-Specific Parental Effects on Offspring Lipid Levels.
Predazzi IM, Sobota RS, Sanna S, Bush WS, Bartlett J, Lilley JS, Linton MF, Schlessinger D, Cucca F, Fazio S, Williams SM,. Plasma lipid levels are highly heritable traits, but known genetic loci can only explain a small portion of their heritability.In this study, we analyzed the role of parental levels of total cholesterol (TC), […]
Recent Publications
- Pillai, JA, Bebek, G, Khrestian, M, Bena, J, Bergmann, CC, Bush, WS, Leverenz, JB, Bekris, LM. TNFRSF1B Gene Variants and Related Soluble TNFR2 Levels Impact Resilience in Alzheimer's Disease. Front Aging Neurosci 2021; 13 : 638922. PubMed PMID:33716716 PubMed Central PMC7947258.
- Huynh-Le, MP, Fan, CC, Karunamuni, R, Thompson, WK, Martinez, ME, Eeles, RA, Kote-Jarai, Z, Muir, K, Schleutker, J, Pashayan, N et al.. Polygenic hazard score is associated with prostate cancer in multi-ethnic populations. Nat Commun 2021; 12 (1): 1236. PubMed PMID:33623038 PubMed Central PMC7902617.
- Conti, DV, Darst, BF, Moss, LC, Saunders, EJ, Sheng, X, Chou, A, Schumacher, FR, Olama, AAA, Benlloch, S, Dadaev, T et al.. Publisher Correction: Trans-ancestry genome-wide association meta-analysis of prostate cancer identifies new susceptibility loci and informs genetic risk prediction. Nat Genet 2021; 53 (3): 413. PubMed PMID:33473200 .
- Stein, CM, Benchek, P, Bartlett, J, Igo, RP, Sobota, RS, Chervenak, K, Mayanja-Kizza, H, von Reyn, CF, Lahey, T, Bush, WS et al.. Methylome-wide analysis reveals epigenetic marks associated with resistance to tuberculosis in HIV-infected individuals from East Africa. J Infect Dis 2021; : . PubMed PMID:33400784 .
- Conti, DV, Darst, BF, Moss, LC, Saunders, EJ, Sheng, X, Chou, A, Schumacher, FR, Olama, AAA, Benlloch, S, Dadaev, T et al.. Trans-ancestry genome-wide association meta-analysis of prostate cancer identifies new susceptibility loci and informs genetic risk prediction. Nat Genet 2021; 53 (1): 65-75. PubMed PMID:33398198 .
- Liu, LY, Bush, WS, Koyutürk, M, Karakurt, G. Interplay between traumatic brain injury and intimate partner violence: data driven analysis utilizing electronic health records. BMC Womens Health 2020; 20 (1): 269. PubMed PMID:33287806 PubMed Central PMC7720451.
- Cooke Bailey, JN, Bush, WS, Crawford, DC. Editorial: The Importance of Diversity in Precision Medicine Research. Front Genet 2020; 11 : 875. PubMed PMID:33005167 PubMed Central PMC7479241.
- Karunamuni, RA, Huynh-Le, MP, Fan, CC, Thompson, W, Eeles, RA, Kote-Jarai, Z, Muir, K, UKGPCS Collaborators, Lophatananon, A, Tangen, CM et al.. African-specific improvement of a polygenic hazard score for age at diagnosis of prostate cancer. Int J Cancer 2021; 148 (1): 99-105. PubMed PMID:32930425 .
- Tang, ZZ, Sliwoski, GR, Chen, G, Jin, B, Bush, WS, Li, B, Capra, JA. PSCAN: Spatial scan tests guided by protein structures improve complex disease gene discovery and signal variant detection. Genome Biol 2020; 21 (1): 217. PubMed PMID:32847609 PubMed Central PMC7448521.
- Dumitrescu, L, Mahoney, ER, Mukherjee, S, Lee, ML, Bush, WS, Engelman, CD, Lu, Q, Fardo, DW, Trittschuh, EH, Mez, J et al.. Genetic variants and functional pathways associated with resilience to Alzheimer's disease. Brain 2020; 143 (8): 2561-2575. PubMed PMID:32844198 PubMed Central PMC7447518.