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Distant regulatory effects of genetic variation in multiple human tissues

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TLDR
These analyses provide a comprehensive characterization of trans-eQTLs across human tissues, which contribute to an improved understanding of the tissue-specific cellular mechanisms of regulatory genetic variation.
Abstract
Understanding the genetics of gene regulation provides information on the cellular mechanisms through which genetic variation influences complex traits. Expression quantitative trait loci, or eQTLs, are enriched for polymorphisms that have been found to be associated with disease risk. While most analyses of human data has focused on regulation of expression by nearby variants (cis-eQTLs), distal or trans-eQTLs may have broader effects on the transcriptome and important phenotypic consequences, necessitating a comprehensive study of the effects of genetic variants on distal gene transcription levels. In this work, we identify trans-eQTLs in the Genotype Tissue Expression (GTEx) project data, consisting of 449 individuals with RNA-sequencing data across 44 tissue types. We find 81 genes with a trans-eQTL in at least one tissue, and we demonstrate that trans-eQTLs are more likely than cis-eQTLs to have effects specific to a single tissue. We evaluate the genomic and functional properties of trans-eQTL variants, identifying strong enrichment in enhancer elements and Piwi-interacting RNA clusters. Finally, we describe three tissue-specific regulatory loci underlying relevant disease associations: 9q22 in thyroid that has a role in thyroid cancer, 5q31 in skeletal muscle, and a previously reported master regulator near KLF14 in adipose. These analyses provide a comprehensive characterization of trans-eQTLs across human tissues, which contribute to an improved understanding of the tissue-specific cellular mechanisms of regulatory genetic variation.

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Integrative analysis of 111 reference human epigenomes

TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe the integrative analysis of 111 reference human epigenomes generated as part of the NIH Roadmap Epigenomics Consortium, profiled for histone modification patterns, DNA accessibility, DNA methylation and RNA expression.
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An Expanded View of Complex Traits: From Polygenic to Omnigenic

TL;DR: It is proposed that gene regulatory networks are sufficiently interconnected such that all genes expressed in disease-relevant cells are liable to affect the functions of core disease-related genes and that most heritability can be explained by effects on genes outside core pathways.
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Co-expression networks reveal the tissue-specific regulation of transcription and splicing

Ashis Saha, +259 more
- 11 Oct 2017 - 
TL;DR: These networks are built that additionally capture the regulation of relative isoform abundance and splicing, along with tissue-specific connections unique to each of a diverse set of tissues, and provide an improved understanding of the complex relationships of the human transcriptome across tissues.
Posted ContentDOI

Trans effects on gene expression can drive omnigenic inheritance

TL;DR: This work provides a formal model in which genetic contributions to complex traits can be partitioned into direct effects from core genes, and indirect effects from peripheral genes acting as trans-regulators, and proposes a framework for understanding key features of the architecture of complex traits.
References
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