
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

Genetic analysis of biological pathway data through genomic randomization.
Yaspan BL, Bush WS, Torstenson ES, Ma D, Pericak-Vance MA, Ritchie MD, Sutcliffe JS, Haines JL,. Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS) are a standard approach for large-scale common variation characterization and for identification of single loci predisposing to disease. However, due to issues of moderate sample sizes and particularly multiple testing correction, many variants of […]

Multivariate analysis of regulatory SNPs: empowering personal genomics by considering cis-epistasis and heterogeneity.
Turner SD, Bush WS,. Understanding how genetic variants impact the regulation and expression of genes is important for forging mechanistic links between variants and phenotypes in personal genomics studies. In this work, we investigate statistical interactions among variants that alter gene expression and identify 79 genes showing highly significant interaction effects consistent with genetic heterogeneity. […]

Genome simulation approaches for synthesizing in silico datasets for human genomics.
Ritchie MD, Bush WS,. Simulated data is a necessary first step in the evaluation of new analytic methods because in simulated data the true effects are known. To successfully develop novel statistical and computational methods for genetic analysis, it is vital to simulate datasets consisting of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) spread throughout the genome at […]

Evidence for polygenic susceptibility to multiple sclerosis–the shape of things to come.
, Bush WS, Sawcer SJ, de Jager PL, Oksenberg JR, McCauley JL, Pericak-Vance MA, Haines JL,. It is well established that the risk of developing multiple sclerosis is substantially increased in the relatives of affected individuals and that most of this increase is genetically determined. The observed pattern of familial recurrence risk has long suggested […]

Visualizing SNP statistics in the context of linkage disequilibrium using LD-Plus.
Bush WS, Dudek SM, Ritchie MD,. Often in human genetic analysis, multiple tables of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) statistics are shown alongside a Haploview style correlation plot. Readers are then asked to make inferences that incorporate knowledge across these multiple sets of results. To better facilitate a collective understanding of all available data, we developed […]
Recent Publications
- Tejeda, M, Farrell, J, Zhu, C, Wetzler, L, Lunetta, KL, Bush, WS, Martin, ER, Wang, LS, Schellenberg, GD, Pericak-Vance, MA et al.. DNA from multiple viral species is associated with Alzheimer's disease risk. Alzheimers Dement 2023; : . PubMed PMID:37578203 .
- Walters, S, Contreras, AG, Eissman, JM, Mukherjee, S, Lee, ML, Choi, SE, Scollard, P, Trittschuh, EH, Mez, JB, Bush, WS et al.. Associations of Sex, Race, and Apolipoprotein E Alleles With Multiple Domains of Cognition Among Older Adults. JAMA Neurol 2023; 80 (9): 929-939. PubMed PMID:37459083 PubMed Central PMC10352930.
- Grunin, M, Palmer, E, de Jong, S, Jin, B, Rinker, D, Moth, C, Capra, JA, Haines, JL, Bush, WS, den Hollander, AI et al.. Integrating Computational Approaches to Predict the Effect of Genetic Variants on Protein Stability in Retinal Degenerative Disease. Adv Exp Med Biol 2023; 1415 : 157-163. PubMed PMID:37440029 .
- Li, D, Farrell, JJ, Mez, J, Martin, ER, Bush, WS, Ruiz, A, Boada, M, de Rojas, I, Mayeux, R, Haines, JL et al.. Novel loci for Alzheimer's disease identified by a genome-wide association study in Ashkenazi Jews. Alzheimers Dement 2023; : . PubMed PMID:37260021 .
- Bai, H, Naj, AC, Benchek, P, Dumitrescu, L, Hohman, T, Hamilton-Nelson, K, Kallianpur, AR, Griswold, AJ, Vardarajan, B, Martin, ER et al.. A haptoglobin (HP) structural variant alters the effect of APOE alleles on Alzheimer's disease. Alzheimers Dement 2023; : . PubMed PMID:37051669 .
- McHenry, ML, Simmons, J, Hong, H, Malone, LL, Mayanja-Kizza, H, Bush, WS, Boom, WH, Hawn, TR, Williams, SM, Stein, CM et al.. Tuberculosis severity associates with variants and eQTLs related to vascular biology and infection-induced inflammation. PLoS Genet 2023; 19 (3): e1010387. PubMed PMID:36972313 PubMed Central PMC10079228.
- Bai, H, Zhang, X, Bush, WS. Pharmacogenomic and Statistical Analysis. Methods Mol Biol 2023; 2629 : 305-330. PubMed PMID:36929083 .
- Chen, F, Madduri, RK, Rodriguez, AA, Darst, BF, Chou, A, Sheng, X, Wang, A, Shen, J, Saunders, EJ, Rhie, SK et al.. Evidence of Novel Susceptibility Variants for Prostate Cancer and a Multiancestry Polygenic Risk Score Associated with Aggressive Disease in Men of African Ancestry. Eur Urol 2023; 84 (1): 13-21. PubMed PMID:36872133 PubMed Central PMC10424812.
- Okwuegbuna, OK, Kaur, H, Jennifer, I, Bush, WS, Bharti, A, Umlauf, A, Ellis, RJ, Franklin, DR, Heaton, RK, McCutchan, JA et al.. Anemia and Erythrocyte Indices Are Associated With Neurocognitive Performance Across Multiple Ability Domains in Adults With HIV. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr 2023; 92 (5): 414-421. PubMed PMID:36580636 PubMed Central PMC10006328.
- Rajabli, F, Tosto, G, Hamilton-Nelson, KL, Kunkle, BW, Vardarajan, BN, Naj, A, Whitehead, PG, Gardner, OK, Bush, WS, Sariya, S et al.. Admixture mapping identifies novel Alzheimer's disease risk regions in African Americans. Alzheimers Dement 2023; 19 (6): 2538-2548. PubMed PMID:36539198 PubMed Central PMC10272044.