Project description:Puerto Ricans are a racially admixed population, that consists of European, African and Native American ancestrie. Understanding eQTL patterns in Puerto Ricans should help us elucidate both regulation of gene expression and disease causation in racially admixed populations in general, and in Hispanic subgroups in particular.
Project description:Viral strains, age, and host factors including genetics and proteins are associated with variable immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 and disease severity. We hypothesized that unique proteins/pathways are associated with COVID-19 disease severity in Puerto Rican Hispanics. A total of 121 men and women aged 21-80 years-old were recruited in Puerto Rico. Plasma samples were collected from unvaccinated COVID-19 infected subjects during acute disease (n=39) and compared to COVID-19 negative individuals (n=56) during acute disease using proteomics and cytokine expression. Infected individuals were stratified based on symptomatology as follows: mild (n=18), moderate (n=13), and severe (n=8). Quantitative proteomics was performed in plasma samples using Tandem Mass Tag (TMT) labeling. Cytokines in plasma were quantified using a human cytokine array. Proteomics analyses revealed 56 differentially regulated proteins and the top 3 pathways that were predicted to be inhibited in severe patients including LXR/RXR signaling, Production of NO and ROS in macrophages, and Synaptogenesis signaling. Decreased cadherin-13 validated by ELISA, which participates in synaptogenesis, is a novel protein is a novel protein not previously reported in other studies of COVID-19 severity and validated by ELISA. Cytokine analyses showed that TNF⍺ levels decreased with disease severity. This study uncovers potential host predictors of COVID-19 severity and new avenues for treatment in Puerto Rican Hispanics.
Project description:CompleteGenomics sequencing of (PUR) Puerto Rican in Puerto Rico HapMap population DNA for sequencing was extracted from whole blood
