Richard J. Allen

TL;DR: By sampling from the extremes of the lung function distribution in UK Biobank, novel genetic causes of lung function and smoking behaviour are identified and substantial shared genetic architecture underlying airflow obstruction is shown across individuals, irrespective of smoking behaviour and other airway disease.

TL;DR: In this paper, a genome-wide association study in 400,102 individuals of European ancestry was conducted to define 279 lung function signals, 139 of which are new and the combined effect of these variants showed generalizability across smokers and never smokers, and across ancestral groups.

TL;DR: In this article, a genetic risk score was associated with COPD susceptibility (odds ratio per 1 s.d. of the risk score (∼6 alleles) (95% confidence interval) = 1.24 (1.20-1.27), P = 5.05 × 10(-49)), and they observed a 3.7-fold difference in COPD risk between individuals in the highest and lowest GA risk score deciles in UK Biobank.

TL;DR: The identification of AKAP13 as a susceptibility gene for IPF increases the prospect of successfully targeting RhoA pathway inhibitors in patients with IPF.

TL;DR: The observation that decreased DEPTOR expression associates with increased susceptibility to IPF supports recent studies demonstrating the importance of mTOR signaling in lung fibrosis, and new signals of association implicating KIF15 and MAD1L1 suggest a possible role of mitotic spindle-assembly genes in IPF susceptibility.