Evidence for a potential role of miR-1908-5p and miR-3614-5p in autoimmune disease risk using integrative bioinformatics

Journal of Autoimmunity
Inken WohlersChristina M Lill

Abstract

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified a large number of genetic risk loci for autoimmune diseases. However, the functional variants underlying these disease associations remain largely unknown. There is evidence that microRNA-mediated regulation may play an important role in this context. Therefore, we assessed whether autoimmune disease loci unfold their effects via altering microRNA expression in relevant immune cells. To this end, we performed comprehensive data integration of many large and publicly available datasets to combine information on autoimmune disease risk loci with RNA-Seq-based microRNA expression data. Specifically, we carried out microRNA expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) analyses across 115 GWAS regions associated with 12 autoimmune diseases using next-generation sequencing data of 345 lymphoblastoid cell lines. Statistical analyses included the application and extension of a recently proposed framework (joint likelihood mapping) to microRNA expression data and microRNA target gene enrichment analyses of relevant GWAS data. Overall, only a minority of autoimmune disease risk loci may exert their pathophysiologic effects by altering microRNA expression based on JLIM. However, detailed...Continue Reading

Citations

Aug 25, 2019·Cells·Marzena CiechomskaWlodzimierz Maslinski
Aug 1, 2020·Genome Biology·Maxime RotivalLluis Quintana-Murci
Jun 16, 2021·Frontiers in Genetics·Lin HanDengqun Sun

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