scholarly journals Non-coding DNA in IBD: from sequence variation in DNA regulatory elements to novel therapeutic potential

Gut ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 68 (5) ◽  
pp. 928-941 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claartje Aleid Meddens ◽  
Amy Catharina Johanna van der List ◽  
Edward Eelco Salomon Nieuwenhuis ◽  
Michal Mokry
Keyword(s):  
Therapeutic Potential ◽  
Association Studies ◽  
Cell Types ◽  
Regulatory Elements ◽  
Genome Wide Association Studies ◽  
Enhancer Activity ◽  
Protein Coding ◽  
Dna Regulatory Elements ◽  
Coding Variants ◽  
Novel Therapeutic

Genome-wide association studies have identified over 200 loci associated with IBD. We and others have recently shown that, in addition to variants in protein-coding genes, the majority of the associated loci are related to DNA regulatory elements (DREs). These findings add a dimension to the already complex genetic background of IBD. In this review we summarise the existing evidence on the role of DREs in IBD. We discuss how epigenetic research can be used in candidate gene approaches that take non-coding variants into account and can help to pinpoint the essential pathways and cell types in the pathogenesis of IBD. Despite the increased level of genetic complexity, these findings can contribute to novel therapeutic options that target transcription factor binding and enhancer activity. Finally, we summarise the future directions and challenges of this emerging field.

scholarly journals Mapping genomic loci prioritises genes and implicates synaptic biology in schizophrenia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Stephan Ripke ◽  
James TR Walters ◽  
Michael C O'Donovan
Keyword(s):  
Developmental Disorder ◽  
Association Studies ◽  
Cell Types ◽  
Genome Wide Association Studies ◽  
Biological Processes ◽  
Neuronal Function ◽  
Protein Coding ◽  
Risk Alleles ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
Coding Variants

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disorder whose pathophysiology is largely unknown. It has a heritability of 60-80%, much of which is attributable to common risk alleles, suggesting genome-wide association studies can inform our understanding of aetiology. Here, in 69,369 people with schizophrenia and 236,642 controls, we report common variant associations at 270 distinct loci. Using fine-mapping and functional genomic data, we prioritise 19 genes based on protein-coding or UTR variation, and 130 genes in total as likely to explain these associations. Fine-mapped candidates were enriched for genes associated with rare disruptive coding variants in people with schizophrenia, including the glutamate receptor subunit GRIN2A and transcription factor SP4, and were also enriched for genes implicated by such variants in autism and developmental disorder. Associations were concentrated in genes expressed in CNS neurons, both excitatory and inhibitory, but not other tissues or cell types, and implicated fundamental processes related to neuronal function, particularly synaptic organisation, differentiation and transmission. We identify biological processes of pathophysiological relevance to schizophrenia, show convergence of common and rare variant associations in schizophrenia and neurodevelopmental disorders, and provide a rich resource of priority genes and variants to advance mechanistic studies.

scholarly journals Assessing the contribution of rare-to-common protein-coding variants to circulating metabolic biomarker levels via 412,394 UK Biobank exome sequences

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abhishek Nag ◽  
Lawrence Middleton ◽  
Ryan S Dhindsa ◽  
Dimitrios Vitsios ◽  
Eleanor M Wigmore ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gene Networks ◽  
Rare Variants ◽  
Association Studies ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Genome Wide Association Studies ◽  
Uk Biobank ◽  
Protein Coding ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Metabolic Biomarkers ◽  
Coding Variants

Genome-wide association studies have established the contribution of common and low frequency variants to metabolic biomarkers in the UK Biobank (UKB); however, the role of rare variants remains to be assessed systematically. We evaluated rare coding variants for 198 metabolic biomarkers, including metabolites assayed by Nightingale Health, using exome sequencing in participants from four genetically diverse ancestries in the UKB (N=412,394). Gene-level collapsing analysis, that evaluated a range of genetic architectures, identified a total of 1,303 significant relationships between genes and metabolic biomarkers (p<1x10-8), encompassing 207 distinct genes. These include associations between rare non-synonymous variants in GIGYF1 and glucose and lipid biomarkers, SYT7 and creatinine, and others, which may provide insights into novel disease biology. Comparing to a previous microarray-based genotyping study in the same cohort, we observed that 40% of gene-biomarker relationships identified in the collapsing analysis were novel. Finally, we applied Gene-SCOUT, a novel tool that utilises the gene-biomarker association statistics from the collapsing analysis to identify genes having similar biomarker fingerprints and thus expand our understanding of gene networks.

scholarly journals Genomic characterization of the adolescent idiopathic scoliosis associated transcriptome and regulome

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadja Makki ◽  
Jingjing Zhao ◽  
Zhaoyang Liu ◽  
Walter L. Eckalbar ◽  
Aki Ushiki ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis ◽  
Connective Tissue ◽  
Idiopathic Scoliosis ◽  
Association Studies ◽  
Regulatory Elements ◽  
Intervertebral Discs ◽  
Genome Wide Association Studies ◽  
Specific Expression ◽  
Enhancer Activity ◽  
Genome Wide

AbstractAdolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS), a sideways curvature of the spine, is the most common pediatric musculoskeletal disorder, affecting ∼3% of the population worldwide. However, its genetic bases and tissues of origin remain largely unknown. Several genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have implicated nucleotide variants in noncoding sequences that control genes with important roles in cartilage, muscle, bone, connective tissue and intervertebral discs (IVDs) as drivers of AIS susceptibility. Here, we set out to define the expression of AIS-associated genes and active regulatory elements by performing RNA-seq and ChIP-seq against H3K27ac in these tissues in mouse and human. Our study highlights genetic pathways involving AIS-associated loci that regulate chondrogenesis, IVD development and connective tissue maintenance and homeostasis. In addition, we identify thousands of putative AIS-associated regulatory elements which may orchestrate tissue-specific expression in musculoskeletal tissues of the spine. Quantification of enhancer activity of several candidate regulatory elements from our study identifies three functional enhancers carrying AIS-associated GWAS SNPs at the ADGRG6 and BNC2 loci. Our findings provide a novel genome-wide catalog of AIS-relevant genes and regulatory elements and aid in the identification of novel targets for AIS causality and treatment.

scholarly journals Analysis of putative cis-regulatory elements regulating blood pressure variation

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (11) ◽  
pp. 1922-1932
Author(s):  
Priyanka Nandakumar ◽  
Dongwon Lee ◽  
Thomas J Hoffmann ◽  
Georg B Ehret ◽  
Dan Arking ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Blood Pressure ◽  
Association Studies ◽  
Specific Effect ◽  
Cell Types ◽  
Regulatory Elements ◽  
Open Chromatin ◽  
Genome Wide Association Studies ◽  
Cell Type ◽  
Functional Scores ◽  
Cell Type Specific

Abstract Hundreds of loci have been associated with blood pressure (BP) traits from many genome-wide association studies. We identified an enrichment of these loci in aorta and tibial artery expression quantitative trait loci in our previous work in ~100 000 Genetic Epidemiology Research on Aging study participants. In the present study, we sought to fine-map known loci and identify novel genes by determining putative regulatory regions for these and other tissues relevant to BP. We constructed maps of putative cis-regulatory elements (CREs) using publicly available open chromatin data for the heart, aorta and tibial arteries, and multiple kidney cell types. Variants within these regions may be evaluated quantitatively for their tissue- or cell-type-specific regulatory impact using deltaSVM functional scores, as described in our previous work. We aggregate variants within these putative CREs within 50 Kb of the start or end of ‘expressed’ genes in these tissues or cell types using public expression data and use deltaSVM scores as weights in the group-wise sequence kernel association test to identify candidates. We test for association with both BP traits and expression within these tissues or cell types of interest and identify the candidates MTHFR, C10orf32, CSK, NOV, ULK4, SDCCAG8, SCAMP5, RPP25, HDGFRP3, VPS37B and PPCDC. Additionally, we examined two known QT interval genes, SCN5A and NOS1AP, in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, as a positive control, and observed the expected heart-specific effect. Thus, our method identifies variants and genes for further functional testing using tissue- or cell-type-specific putative regulatory information.

scholarly journals Human library of cardiac promoters and enhancers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruslan M. Deviatiiarov ◽  
Anna Gams ◽  
Roman Syunyaev ◽  
Tatiana V. Tatarinova ◽  
Oleg Gusev ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heart Diseases ◽  
Association Studies ◽  
Expression Patterns ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Regulatory Elements ◽  
Specific Cell ◽  
Genome Wide Association Studies ◽  
Specific Expression ◽  
Enhancer Activity ◽  
Human Donor

AbstractGenome regulatory elements play a critical role during cardiac development and maintenance of normal physiological homeostasis, and genome-wide association studies identified a large number of SNPs associated with cardiovascular diseases localized in intergenic zones. We used cap analysis of gene expression (CAGE) to identify transcription start sites (TSS) with one nucleotide resolution that effectively maps genome regulatory elements in a representative collection of human heart tissues. Here we present a comprehensive and fully annotated CAGE atlas of human promoters and enhancers from four chambers of the non-diseased human donor hearts, including both atria and ventricles. We have identified 10,528 novel regulatory elements, where 2,750 are classified as TSS and 4,258 novel enhancers, which were validated with ChIP-seq libraries and motif enrichment analysis. We found that heart-region specific expression patterns are primarily based on the alternative promoter and specific enhancer activity. Our study significantly increased evidence of the association of regulatory elements-located variants with heart morphology and pathologies. The precise location of cardiac disease-related SNPs within the regulatory regions and their correlation with a specific cell type offers a new understanding of genetic heart diseases.

scholarly journals Open Targets Genetics: An open approach to systematically prioritize causal variants and genes at all published human GWAS trait-associated loci

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Mountjoy ◽  
Ellen M. Schmidt ◽  
Miguel Carmona ◽  
Gareth Peat ◽  
Alfredo Miranda ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Complex Traits ◽  
Drug Targets ◽  
Association Studies ◽  
Single Gene ◽  
Cell Types ◽  
Causal Variant ◽  
Genome Wide Association Studies ◽  
Open Approach ◽  
Protein Coding ◽  
Causal Genes

AbstractGenome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified many variants robustly associated with complex traits but identifying the gene(s) mediating such associations is a major challenge. Here we present an open resource that provides systematic fine-mapping and protein-coding gene prioritization across 133,441 published human GWAS loci. We integrate diverse data sources, including genetics (from GWAS Catalog and UK Biobank) as well as transcriptomic, proteomic and epigenomic data across many tissues and cell types. We also provide systematic disease-disease and disease-molecular trait colocalization results across 92 cell types and tissues and identify 729 loci fine-mapped to a single coding causal variant and colocalized with a single gene. We trained a machine learning model using the fine mapped genetics and functional genomics data using 445 gold standard curated GWAS loci to distinguish causal genes from background genes at the same loci, outperforming a naive distance based model. Genes prioritized by our model are enriched for known approved drug targets (OR = 8.1, 95% CI: [5.7, 11.5]). These results will be regularly updated and are publicly available through a web portal, Open Targets Genetics (OTG, http://genetics.opentargets.org), enabling users to easily prioritize genes at disease-associated loci and assess their potential as drug targets.

scholarly journals Risk variants disrupting enhancers of TH1 and TREG cells in type 1 diabetes

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (15) ◽  
pp. 7581-7590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peng Gao ◽  
Yasin Uzun ◽  
Bing He ◽  
Sarah E. Salamati ◽  
Julie K. M. Coffey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Type 1 Diabetes ◽  
Retinoic Acid Receptor ◽  
Association Studies ◽  
Cell Types ◽  
Treg Cells ◽  
Genome Wide Association Studies ◽  
Enhancer Activity ◽  
Functional Interpretation ◽  
Immune Genes

Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have revealed 59 genomic loci associated with type 1 diabetes (T1D). Functional interpretation of the SNPs located in the noncoding region of these loci remains challenging. We perform epigenomic profiling of two enhancer marks, H3K4me1 and H3K27ac, using primary TH1 and TREG cells isolated from healthy and T1D subjects. We uncover a large number of deregulated enhancers and altered transcriptional circuitries in both cell types of T1D patients. We identify four SNPs (rs10772119, rs10772120, rs3176792, rs883868) in linkage disequilibrium (LD) with T1D-associated GWAS lead SNPs that alter enhancer activity and expression of immune genes. Among them, rs10772119 and rs883868 disrupt the binding of retinoic acid receptor α (RARA) and Yin and Yang 1 (YY1), respectively. Loss of binding by YY1 also results in the loss of long-range enhancer–promoter interaction. These findings provide insights into how noncoding variants affect the transcriptomes of two T-cell subtypes that play critical roles in T1D pathogenesis.

scholarly journals GARFIELD - GWAS Analysis of Regulatory or Functional Information Enrichment with LD correction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentina Iotchkova ◽  
Graham R.S. Ritchie ◽  
Matthias Geihs ◽  
Sandro Morganella ◽  
Josine L. Min ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Association Studies ◽  
R Package ◽  
Genome Wide Association Studies ◽  
Protein Coding ◽  
Functional Annotations ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Genome Wide ◽  
Functional Consequences ◽  
Genomic Regions ◽  
Coding Variants

Loci discovered by genome-wide association studies (GWAS) predominantly map outside protein-coding genes. The interpretation of functional consequences of non-coding variants can be greatly enhanced by catalogs of regulatory genomic regions in cell lines and primary tissues. However, robust and readily applicable methods are still lacking to systematically evaluate the contribution of these regions to genetic variation implicated in diseases or quantitative traits. Here we propose a novel approach that leverages GWAS findings with regulatory or functional annotations to classify features relevant to a phenotype of interest. Within our framework, we account for major sources of confounding that current methods do not offer. We further assess enrichment statistics for 27 GWAS traits within regulatory regions from the ENCODE and Roadmap projects. We characterise unique enrichment patterns for traits and annotations, driving novel biological insights. The method is implemented in standalone software and R package to facilitate its application by the research community.

scholarly journals Human atlas of cardiac promoters and enhancers reveals important role of regulatory elements in heritable diseases

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruslan Deviatiiarov ◽  
Anna Gams ◽  
Roman Syunyaev ◽  
Tatiana Tatarinova ◽  
Oleg Gusev ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heart Diseases ◽  
Association Studies ◽  
Expression Patterns ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Regulatory Elements ◽  
Specific Cell ◽  
Genome Wide Association Studies ◽  
Specific Expression ◽  
Enhancer Activity ◽  
Human Donor

Abstract Genome regulatory elements play a critical role during cardiac development and maintenance of normal physiological homeostasis, and genome-wide association studies identified a large number of SNPs associated with cardiovascular diseases localized in intergenic zones. We used cap analysis of gene expression (CAGE) to identify transcription start sites (TSS) with one nucleotide resolution that effectively maps genome regulatory elements in a representative collection of human heart tissues. Here we present a comprehensive and fully annotated CAGE atlas of human promoters and enhancers from four chambers of the non-diseased human donor hearts, including both atria and ventricles. We have identified 10,528 novel regulatory elements, where 2,750 are classified as TSS and 4,258 novel enhancers, which were validated with ChIP-seq libraries and motif enrichment analysis. We found that heart-region specific expression patterns are primarily based on the alternative promoter and specific enhancer activity. Our study significantly increased evidence of the association of regulatory elements-located variants with heart morphology and pathologies. The precise location of cardiac disease-related SNPs within the regulatory regions and their correlation with a specific cell type offers a new understanding of genetic heart diseases.

scholarly journals Using regulatory genomics data to interpret the function of disease variants and prioritise genes from expression studies

F1000Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrico Ferrero
Keyword(s):  
Gene Expression ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Association Studies ◽  
Cell Types ◽  
Regulatory Elements ◽  
New Drugs ◽  
Genome Wide Association Studies ◽  
Functional Interpretation ◽  
Expression Studies ◽  
Regulatory Genomics

The identification of therapeutic targets is a critical step in the research and developement of new drugs, with several drug discovery programmes failing because of a weak linkage between target and disease. Genome-wide association studies and large-scale gene expression experiments are providing insights into the biology of several common and complex diseases, but the complexity of transcriptional regulation mechanisms often limit our understanding of how genetic variation can influence changes in gene expression. Several initiatives in the field of regulatory genomics are aiming to close this gap by systematically identifying and cataloguing regulatory elements such as promoters and enhacers across different tissues and cell types. In this Bioconductor workflow, we will explore how different types of regulatory genomic data can be used for the functional interpretation of disease-associated variants and for the prioritisation of gene lists from gene expression experiments.

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