COVID-19 genetic risk variants are associated with expression of multiple genes in diverse immune cell types

Benjamin J. Schmiedel, Job Rocha, Cristian Gonzalez-Colin, Sourya Bhattacharyya, Ariel Madrigal, Christian H. Ottensmeier, Ferhat Ay, Vivek Chandra and Pandurangan Vijayanand ()
Additional contact information
Benjamin J. Schmiedel: La Jolla Institute for Immunology
Job Rocha: La Jolla Institute for Immunology
Cristian Gonzalez-Colin: La Jolla Institute for Immunology
Sourya Bhattacharyya: La Jolla Institute for Immunology
Ariel Madrigal: La Jolla Institute for Immunology
Christian H. Ottensmeier: La Jolla Institute for Immunology
Ferhat Ay: La Jolla Institute for Immunology
Vivek Chandra: La Jolla Institute for Immunology
Pandurangan Vijayanand: La Jolla Institute for Immunology

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Common genetic polymorphisms associated with COVID-19 illness can be utilized for discovering molecular pathways and cell types driving disease pathogenesis. Given the importance of immune cells in the pathogenesis of COVID-19 illness, here we assessed the effects of COVID-19-risk variants on gene expression in a wide range of immune cell types. Transcriptome-wide association study and colocalization analysis revealed putative causal genes and the specific immune cell types where gene expression is most influenced by COVID-19-risk variants. Notable examples include OAS1 in non-classical monocytes, DTX1 in B cells, IL10RB in NK cells, CXCR6 in follicular helper T cells, CCR9 in regulatory T cells and ARL17A in TH2 cells. By analysis of transposase accessible chromatin and H3K27ac-based chromatin-interaction maps of immune cell types, we prioritized potentially functional COVID-19-risk variants. Our study highlights the potential of COVID-19 genetic risk variants to impact the function of diverse immune cell types and influence severe disease manifestations.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26888-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-26888-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-26888-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().