Lili Wang, Nikita Babushkin, Zhonghua Liu, Xuanyao Liu
{"title":"Trans-eQTL mapping in gene sets identifies network effects of genetic variants.","authors":"Lili Wang, Nikita Babushkin, Zhonghua Liu, Xuanyao Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.xgen.2024.100538","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Nearly all trait-associated variants identified in genome-wide association studies (GWASs) are noncoding. The cis regulatory effects of these variants have been extensively characterized, but how they affect gene regulation in trans has been the subject of fewer studies because of the difficulty in detecting trans-expression quantitative loci (eQTLs). We developed trans-PCO for detecting trans effects of genetic variants on gene networks. Our simulations demonstrate that trans-PCO substantially outperforms existing trans-eQTL mapping methods. We applied trans-PCO to two gene expression datasets from whole blood, DGN (N = 913) and eQTLGen (N = 31,684), and identified 14,985 high-quality trans-eSNP-module pairs associated with 197 co-expression gene modules and biological processes. We performed colocalization analyses between GWAS loci of 46 complex traits and the trans-eQTLs. We demonstrated that the identified trans effects can help us understand how trait-associated variants affect gene regulatory networks and biological pathways.</p>","PeriodicalId":72539,"journal":{"name":"Cell genomics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":11.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11019359/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cell genomics","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.2024.100538","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/4/1 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CELL BIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Nearly all trait-associated variants identified in genome-wide association studies (GWASs) are noncoding. The cis regulatory effects of these variants have been extensively characterized, but how they affect gene regulation in trans has been the subject of fewer studies because of the difficulty in detecting trans-expression quantitative loci (eQTLs). We developed trans-PCO for detecting trans effects of genetic variants on gene networks. Our simulations demonstrate that trans-PCO substantially outperforms existing trans-eQTL mapping methods. We applied trans-PCO to two gene expression datasets from whole blood, DGN (N = 913) and eQTLGen (N = 31,684), and identified 14,985 high-quality trans-eSNP-module pairs associated with 197 co-expression gene modules and biological processes. We performed colocalization analyses between GWAS loci of 46 complex traits and the trans-eQTLs. We demonstrated that the identified trans effects can help us understand how trait-associated variants affect gene regulatory networks and biological pathways.