Charles Explorer logo
🇬🇧

A systems biology approach uncovers cell-specific gene regulatory effects of genetic associations in multiple sclerosis

Publication at First Faculty of Medicine |
2019

Abstract

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified more than 50,000 unique associations with common human traits. While this represents a substantial step forward, establishing the biology underlying these associations has proven extremely difficult.

Even determining which cell types and which particular gene(s) are relevant continues to be a challenge. Here, we conduct a cell-specific pathway analysis of the latest GWAS in multiple sclerosis (MS), which had analyzed a total of 47,351 cases and 68,284 healthy controls and found more than 200 non-MHC genome-wide associations.

Our analysis identifies pan immune cell as well as cell-specific susceptibility genes in T cells, B cells and monocytes. Finally, genotype-level data from 2,370 patients and 412 controls is used to compute intraindividual and cell-specific susceptibility pathways that offer a biological interpretation of the individual genetic risk to MS.

This approach could be adopted in any other complex trait for which genome-wide data is available.