Publications by authors named "A R Battle"

Motivation: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified genetic variants, usually single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), associated with human traits, including disease and disease risk. These variants (or causal variants in linkage disequilibrium with them) usually affect the regulation or function of a nearby gene. A GWAS locus can span many genes, however, and prioritizing which gene or genes in a locus are most likely to be causal remains a challenge.

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Suboptimal gestational weight gain (GWG) is associated with pregnancy complications and postpartum weight retention (PPWR). Little data exists about GWG and PPWR attitudes and beliefs in low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) to inform interventions. We examined GWG and PPWR attitudes, beliefs, and intentions among pregnant people, with and without HIV, in Cape Town, South Africa.

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Article Synopsis
  • Genetic variation linked to complex traits is highly pleiotropic, meaning it affects multiple traits, which can be better understood through multi-phenotype analyses to identify shared and specific genetic factors.
  • Traditional matrix factorization (MF) methods struggle with issues like sample-sharing confounding and often yield factors too broad to map onto biological pathways, prompting a need for improvement.
  • The newly introduced method GLEANR effectively addresses these challenges by detecting sparse genetic factors from GWAS summary statistics, improves the replication of genetic factors across different studies, and offers clearer interpretations aligned with diseases and biological processes, as demonstrated through its evaluation of the UK Biobank.
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Identifying the molecular effects of human genetic variation across cellular contexts is crucial for understanding the mechanisms underlying disease-associated loci, yet many cell types and developmental stages remain underexplored. Here, we harnessed the potential of heterogeneous differentiating cultures (HDCs), an in vitro system in which pluripotent cells asynchronously differentiate into a broad spectrum of cell types. We generated HDCs for 53 human donors and collected single-cell RNA sequencing data from over 900,000 cells.

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The effects of genetic variation on complex traits act mainly through changes in gene regulation. Although many genetic variants have been linked to target genes in cis, the trans-regulatory cascade mediating their effects remains largely uncharacterized. Mapping trans-regulators based on natural genetic variation has been challenging due to small effects, but experimental perturbations offer a complementary approach.

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