Dataset Information

3DFAACTS-SNP: using regulatory T cell-specific epigenomics data to uncover candidate mechanisms of type 1 diabetes (T1D) risk.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have enabled the discovery of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that are significantly associated with many autoimmune diseases including type 1 diabetes (T1D). However, many of the identified variants lie in non-coding regions, limiting the identification of mechanisms that contribute to autoimmune disease progression. To address this problem, we developed a variant filtering workflow called 3DFAACTS-SNP to link genetic variants to target genes in a cell-specific manner. Here, we use 3DFAACTS-SNP to identify candidate SNPs and target genes associated with the loss of immune tolerance in regulatory T cells (Treg) in T1D.

Results

Using 3DFAACTS-SNP, we identified from a list of 1228 previously fine-mapped variants, 36 SNPs with plausible Treg-specific mechanisms of action. The integration of cell type-specific chromosome conformation capture data in 3DFAACTS-SNP identified 266 regulatory regions and 47 candidate target genes that interact with these variant-containing regions in Treg cells. We further demonstrated the utility of the workflow by applying it to three other SNP autoimmune datasets, identifying 16 Treg-centric candidate variants and 60 interacting genes. Finally, we demonstrate the broad utility of 3DFAACTS-SNP for functional annotation of all known common (> 10% allele frequency) variants from the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD). We identified 9376 candidate variants and 4968 candidate target genes, generating a list of potential sites for future T1D or other autoimmune disease research.

Conclusions

We demonstrate that it is possible to further prioritise variants that contribute to T1D based on regulatory function, and illustrate the power of using cell type-specific multi-omics datasets to determine disease mechanisms. Our workflow can be customised to any cell type for which the individual datasets for functional annotation have been generated, giving broad applicability and utility.

SUBMITTER: Liu N

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9244893 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Genome wide association studies (GWAS) are a population-scale approach to the identification of segments of the genome in which genetic variations may contribute to disease risk. Current methods focus on the discovery of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with disease traits. As there are many SNPs within identified risk loci, and the majority of these are situated within non-coding regions, a key challenge is to identify and prioritize variants affecting regulatory sequences that are likely to contribute to the phenotype assessed.We focused investigation on SNPs within lung and breast cancer GWAS loci that reached genome-wide significance for potential roles in gene regulation with a specific focus on SNPs likely to disrupt transcription factor binding sites. Within risk loci, the regulatory potential of sub-regions was classified using relevant open chromatin and epigenetic high throughput sequencing data sets from the ENCODE project in available cancer and normal cell lines. Furthermore, transcription factor affinity altering variants were predicted by comparison of position weight matrix scores between disease and reference alleles. Lastly, ChIP-seq data of transcription associated factors and topological domains were included as binding evidence and potential gene target inference.The sets of SNPs, including both the disease-associated markers and those in high linkage disequilibrium with them, were significantly over-represented in regulatory sequences of cancer and/or normal cells; however, over-representation was generally not restricted to disease-relevant tissue specific regions. The calculated regulatory potential, allelic binding affinity scores and ChIP-seq binding evidence were the three criteria used to prioritize candidates. Fitting all three criteria, we highlighted breast cancer susceptibility SNPs and a borderline lung cancer relevant SNP located in cancer-specific enhancers overlapping multiple distinct transcription associated factor ChIP-seq binding sites.Incorporating high throughput sequencing epigenetic and transcription factor data sets from both cancer and normal cells into cancer genetic studies reveals potential functional SNPs and informs subsequent characterization efforts.