Abstract
One important piece of information about the human Mendelian disorders is the mode of inheritance. Recent studies of human genetic diseases on a large scale have provided many novel insights into the underlying molecular mechanisms. However, most successful analyses ignored the mode of inheritance of diseases, which severely limits our understanding of human disease mechanisms relating to the mode of inheritance at the large scale. Therefore, we here conducted a systematic large-scale study of the inheritance mode of Mendelian disorders, to bring new insight into human diseases. Our analyses include the comparison between dominant and recessive disease genes on both genomic and proteomic characteristics, Mendelian mutations, protein network properties and disease connections on both the genetic and the population levels. We found that dominant disease genes are more functionally central, topological central and more sensitive to disease outcome. On the basis of these findings, we suggested that dominant diseases should have higher genetic heterogeneity and should have more comprehensive connections with each other compared with recessive diseases, a prediction we confirm by disease network and disease comorbidity.