Effects of cis-regulatory variation differ across regions of the adult human brain.

Hum Mol Genet

Centre for the Cellular Basis of Behaviour, Department of Neuroscience, The James Black Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, 125 Coldharbour Lane, London, UK.

Published: November 2010

Cis-regulatory variation is considered to be an important determinant of human phenotypic variability, including susceptibility to complex disease. Recent studies have shown that the effects of cis-regulatory polymorphism on gene expression can differ widely between tissues. In the present study, we tested whether the effects of cis-regulatory variation can also differ between regions of the adult human brain. We used relative allelic expression to measure cis-effects on the RNA expression of five candidate genes for neuropsychiatric illness (ZNF804A, NOS1, RGS4, AKT1 and TCF4) across multiple discrete brain regions within individual subjects. For all five genes, we observed significant differences in allelic expression between brain regions in several individual subjects, suggesting regional differences in the effects of cis-regulatory polymorphism to be a common phenomenon. As well as highlighting an important caveat for studies of regulatory polymorphism in the brain, our findings indicate that it is possible to delineate brain areas in which cis-regulatory variants are active. This may provide important insights into the fundamental biology of neuropsychiatric phenotypes with which such variants are associated.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3298852PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddq380DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

effects cis-regulatory
16
cis-regulatory variation
12
variation differ
8
differ regions
8
regions adult
8
adult human
8
human brain
8
cis-regulatory polymorphism
8
allelic expression
8
brain regions
8

Similar Publications

Massively parallel characterization of transcriptional regulatory elements.

Nature

January 2025

Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA.

The human genome contains millions of candidate cis-regulatory elements (cCREs) with cell-type-specific activities that shape both health and many disease states. However, we lack a functional understanding of the sequence features that control the activity and cell-type-specific features of these cCREs. Here we used lentivirus-based massively parallel reporter assays (lentiMPRAs) to test the regulatory activity of more than 680,000 sequences, representing an extensive set of annotated cCREs among three cell types (HepG2, K562 and WTC11), and found that 41.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a highly aggressive breast cancer subtype with poor prognosis. RNA alternative splicing dysregulation plays a critical role in the initiation and progression of TNBC. This article systematically introduces the basic process of RNA splicing and then focuses on reviewing the aberrant alternative splicing events and their biological effects in TNBC: 1) Multiple splicing-related factors promote tumor cell proliferation and mediate chemotherapy resistance by regulating the alternative splicing of genes involved in cell survival and drug response; 2) dysregulation of splicing regulatory networks leads to altered splicing of multiple metastasis-related genes, promoting tumor invasion and metastasis; 3) aberrant alternative splicing events participate in tumor progression by affecting the expression of DNA damage repair genes; 4) dysregulation of alternative splicing is also involved in the regulation of tumor immune evasion and stem cell properties.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Sequence-based machine-learning models trained on genomics data improve genetic variant interpretation by providing functional predictions describing their impact on the cis-regulatory code. However, current tools do not predict RNA-seq expression profiles because of modeling challenges. Here, we introduce Borzoi, a model that learns to predict cell-type-specific and tissue-specific RNA-seq coverage from DNA sequence.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Active learning of enhancers and silencers in the developing neural retina.

Cell Syst

December 2024

The Edison Family Center for Genome Sciences & Systems Biology, Saint Louis, MO 63110, USA; Department of Genetics, Saint Louis, MO 63110, USA. Electronic address:

Deep learning is a promising strategy for modeling cis-regulatory elements. However, models trained on genomic sequences often fail to explain why the same transcription factor can activate or repress transcription in different contexts. To address this limitation, we developed an active learning approach to train models that distinguish between enhancers and silencers composed of binding sites for the photoreceptor transcription factor cone-rod homeobox (CRX).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Effect of mRNA formulated with lipid nanoparticles on the transcriptomic and epigenetic profiles of F4/80 liver-associated macrophages.

Sci Rep

January 2025

Center of Excellence in Vaccine Research and Development (Chula Vaccine Research Center-Chula VRC), Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand.

Delivery of an mRNA formulated with lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) induces robust humoral and cell-mediated branches of the immune response. Depending on the LNP formula, mRNA encoding proteins can be detected in the liver upon intramuscular administration of mRNA/LNP in mice. This study investigated the impact of mRNA/LNP administration on liver-associated macrophages at the transcriptomic and epigenetic levels in a mouse model.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!