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Oliveros W, Delfosse K, Lato DF, Kiriakopulos K, Mokhtaridoost M, Said A, McMurray BJ, Browning JW, Mattioli K, Meng G, Ellis J, Mital S, Melé M, Maass PG. Systematic characterization of regulatory variants of blood pressure genes. Cell Genom 2023; 3:100330. [PMID: 37492106 PMCID: PMC10363820 DOI: 10.1016/j.xgen.2023.100330] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/15/2022] [Revised: 03/29/2023] [Accepted: 04/28/2023] [Indexed: 07/27/2023]
Abstract
High blood pressure (BP) is the major risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Genome-wide association studies have identified genetic variants for BP, but functional insights into causality and related molecular mechanisms lag behind. We functionally characterize 4,608 genetic variants in linkage with 135 BP loci in vascular smooth muscle cells and cardiomyocytes by massively parallel reporter assays. High densities of regulatory variants at BP loci (i.e., ULK4, MAP4, CFDP1, PDE5A) indicate that multiple variants drive genetic association. Regulatory variants are enriched in repeats, alter cardiovascular-related transcription factor motifs, and spatially converge with genes controlling specific cardiovascular pathways. Using heuristic scoring, we define likely causal variants, and CRISPR prime editing finally determines causal variants for KCNK9, SFXN2, and PCGF6, which are candidates for developing high BP. Our systems-level approach provides a catalog of functionally relevant variants and their genomic architecture in two trait-relevant cell lines for a better understanding of BP gene regulation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Winona Oliveros
- Life Sciences Department, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, 08034 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
| | - Kate Delfosse
- Genetics & Genome Biology Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON M5G 0A4, Canada
| | - Daniella F. Lato
- Genetics & Genome Biology Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON M5G 0A4, Canada
| | - Katerina Kiriakopulos
- Genetics & Genome Biology Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON M5G 0A4, Canada
- Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Milad Mokhtaridoost
- Genetics & Genome Biology Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON M5G 0A4, Canada
| | - Abdelrahman Said
- Genetics & Genome Biology Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON M5G 0A4, Canada
| | - Brandon J. McMurray
- Genetics & Genome Biology Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON M5G 0A4, Canada
| | - Jared W.L. Browning
- Genetics & Genome Biology Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON M5G 0A4, Canada
- Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Kaia Mattioli
- Division of Genetics, Department of Medicine, Brigham & Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Guoliang Meng
- Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON M5G 0A4, Canada
| | - James Ellis
- Developmental and Stem Cell Biology Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON M5G 0A4, Canada
- Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
| | - Seema Mital
- Genetics & Genome Biology Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON M5G 0A4, Canada
- Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research, Toronto, ON M5G 1X8, Canada
- Department of Pediatrics, The Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5G 0A4, Canada
| | - Marta Melé
- Life Sciences Department, Barcelona Supercomputing Center, 08034 Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
| | - Philipp G. Maass
- Genetics & Genome Biology Program, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, ON M5G 0A4, Canada
- Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
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Han SK, McNulty MT, Benway CJ, Wen P, Greenberg A, Onuchic-Whitford AC, Jang D, Flannick J, Burtt NP, Wilson PC, Humphreys BD, Wen X, Han Z, Lee D, Sampson MG. Mapping genomic regulation of kidney disease and traits through high-resolution and interpretable eQTLs. Nat Commun 2023; 14:2229. [PMID: 37076491 PMCID: PMC10115815 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-37691-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/14/2022] [Accepted: 03/27/2023] [Indexed: 04/21/2023] Open
Abstract
Expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) studies illuminate genomic variants that regulate specific genes and contribute to fine-mapped loci discovered via genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Efforts to maximize their accuracy are ongoing. Using 240 glomerular (GLOM) and 311 tubulointerstitial (TUBE) micro-dissected samples from human kidney biopsies, we discovered 5371 GLOM and 9787 TUBE genes with at least one variant significantly associated with expression (eGene) by incorporating kidney single-nucleus open chromatin data and transcription start site distance as an "integrative prior" for Bayesian statistical fine-mapping. The use of an integrative prior resulted in higher resolution eQTLs illustrated by (1) smaller numbers of variants in credible sets with greater confidence, (2) increased enrichment of partitioned heritability for GWAS of two kidney traits, (3) an increased number of variants colocalized with the GWAS loci, and (4) enrichment of computationally predicted functional regulatory variants. A subset of variants and genes were validated experimentally in vitro and using a Drosophila nephrocyte model. More broadly, this study demonstrates that tissue-specific eQTL maps informed by single-nucleus open chromatin data have enhanced utility for diverse downstream analyses.
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Affiliation(s)
- Seong Kyu Han
- Division of Pediatric Nephrology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
- Kidney Disease Initiative, Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Michelle T McNulty
- Division of Pediatric Nephrology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
- Kidney Disease Initiative, Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Christopher J Benway
- Division of Pediatric Nephrology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
- Kidney Disease Initiative, Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Pei Wen
- Center for Precision Disease Modeling, University of Maryland, School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
| | - Anya Greenberg
- Division of Pediatric Nephrology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
- Kidney Disease Initiative, Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Ana C Onuchic-Whitford
- Division of Pediatric Nephrology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
- Kidney Disease Initiative, Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA
- Division of Renal Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Dongkeun Jang
- Programs in Metabolism and Medical and Population Genetics, Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Jason Flannick
- Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
- Programs in Metabolism and Medical and Population Genetics, Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA
- Division of Genetics and Genomics, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Noël P Burtt
- Programs in Metabolism and Medical and Population Genetics, Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA
| | - Parker C Wilson
- Department of Pathology and Immunology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
| | - Benjamin D Humphreys
- Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
- Department of Developmental Biology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, USA
| | - Xiaoquan Wen
- Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
| | - Zhe Han
- Center for Precision Disease Modeling, University of Maryland, School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.
| | - Dongwon Lee
- Division of Pediatric Nephrology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
- Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
- Kidney Disease Initiative, Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA.
- Manton Center for Orphan Disease Research, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
| | - Matthew G Sampson
- Division of Pediatric Nephrology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
- Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA.
- Kidney Disease Initiative, Broad Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA.
- Division of Renal Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
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Han SK, Muto Y, Wilson PC, Humphreys BD, Sampson MG, Chakravarti A, Lee D. Quality assessment and refinement of chromatin accessibility data using a sequence-based predictive model. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2022; 119:e2212810119. [PMID: 36508674 PMCID: PMC9907136 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2212810119] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/27/2022] [Accepted: 10/28/2022] [Indexed: 12/15/2022] Open
Abstract
Chromatin accessibility assays are central to the genome-wide identification of gene regulatory elements associated with transcriptional regulation. However, the data have highly variable quality arising from several biological and technical factors. To surmount this problem, we developed a sequence-based machine learning method to evaluate and refine chromatin accessibility data. Our framework, gapped k-mer SVM quality check (gkmQC), provides the quality metrics for a sample based on the prediction accuracy of the trained models. We tested 886 DNase-seq samples from the ENCODE/Roadmap projects to demonstrate that gkmQC can effectively identify "high-quality" (HQ) samples with low conventional quality scores owing to marginal read depths. Peaks identified in HQ samples are more accurately aligned at functional regulatory elements, show greater enrichment of regulatory elements harboring functional variants, and explain greater heritability of phenotypes from their relevant tissues. Moreover, gkmQC can optimize the peak-calling threshold to identify additional peaks, especially for rare cell types in single-cell chromatin accessibility data.
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Affiliation(s)
- Seong Kyu Han
- Department of Pediatrics, Division of Nephrology, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston & Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA02115
- Kidney Disease Initiative, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA02142
| | - Yoshiharu Muto
- Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO63130
| | - Parker C. Wilson
- Department of Pathology and Immunology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO63130
| | - Benjamin D. Humphreys
- Division of Nephrology, Department of Medicine, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO63130
- Department of Developmental Biology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO63130
| | - Matthew G. Sampson
- Department of Pediatrics, Division of Nephrology, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston & Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA02115
- Kidney Disease Initiative, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA02142
| | - Aravinda Chakravarti
- Center for Human Genetics and Genomics, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY10016
| | - Dongwon Lee
- Department of Pediatrics, Division of Nephrology, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston & Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA02115
- Manton Center for Orphan Disease Research, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA02115
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Craig A, Delles C, Murray EC. A Review of Vascular Traits and Assessment Techniques, and Their Heritability. Artery Res. [DOI: 10.1007/s44200-022-00016-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/18/2022] Open
Abstract
AbstractVarious tools are available to assess atherosclerosis, arterial stiffening, and endothelial function. They offer utility in the assessment of hypertensive phenotypes, in cardiovascular risk prediction, and as surrogate endpoints in clinical trials. We explore the relative influence of participant genetics, with reference to large-scale genomic studies, population-based cohorts, and candidate gene studies. We find heritability estimates highest for carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT 35–65%), followed by pulse wave velocity as a measure of arterial stiffness (26–43%), and flow mediated dilatation as a surrogate for endothelial function (14–39%); data were lacking for peripheral artery tonometry. We furthermore examine genes and polymorphisms relevant to each technique. We conclude that CIMT and pulse wave velocity dominate the existing evidence base, with fewer published genomic linkages for measures of endothelial function. We finally make recommendations regarding planning and reporting of data relating to vascular assessment techniques, particularly when genomic data are also available, to facilitate integration of these tools into cardiovascular disease research.
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