Seventy-five genetic loci influencing the human red blood cell

Anaemia is a chief determinant of global ill health, contributing to cognitive impairment, growth retardation and impaired physical capacity. To understand further the genetic factors influencing red blood cells, we carried out a genome-wide association study of haemoglobin concentration and related parameters in up to 135,367 individuals. Here we identify 75 independent genetic loci associated with one or more red blood cell phenotypes at P < 10 -8, which together explain 4-9% of the phenotypic variance per trait. Using expression quantitative trait loci and bioinformatic strategies, we identify 121 candidate genes enriched in functions relevant to red blood cell biology. The candidate genes are expressed preferentially in red blood cell precursors, and 43 have haematopoietic phenotypes in Mus musculus or Drosophila melanogaster. Through open-chromatin and coding-variant analyses we identify potential causal genetic variants at 41 loci. Our findings provide extensive new insights into genetic mechanisms and biological pathways controlling red blood cell formation and function. © 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.Link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Seventy-five genetic loci influencing the human red blood cell

Stress-related psychiatric disorders across the life spa

Maps of open chromatin highlight cell type-restricted patterns of regulatory sequence variation at hematological trait loci

<p>Nearly three-quarters of the 143 genetic signals associated with platelet and erythrocyte phenotypes identified by meta-analyses of genome-wide association (GWA) studies are located at non-protein-coding regions. Here, we assessed the role of candidate regulatory variants associated with cell type-restricted, closely related hematological quantitative traits in biologically relevant hematopoietic cell types. We used formaldehyde-assisted isolation of regulatory elements followed by next-generation sequencing (FAIRE-seq) to map regions of open chromatin in three primary human blood cells of the myeloid lineage. In the precursors of platelets and erythrocytes, as well as in monocytes, we found that open chromatin signatures reflect the corresponding hematopoietic lineages of the studied cell types and associate with the cell type-specific gene expression patterns. Dependent on their signal strength, open chromatin regions showed correlation with promoter and enhancer histone marks, distance to the transcription start site, and ontology classes of nearby genes. Cell type-restricted regions of open chromatin were enriched in sequence variants associated with hematological indices. The majority (63.6%) of such candidate functional variants at platelet quantitative trait loci (QTLs) coincided with binding sites of five transcription factors key in regulating megakaryopoiesis. We experimentally tested 13 candidate regulatory variants at 10 platelet QTLs and found that 10 (76.9%) affected protein binding, suggesting that this is a frequent mechanism by which regulatory variants influence quantitative trait levels. Our findings demonstrate that combining large-scale GWA data with open chromatin profiles of relevant cell types can be a powerful means of dissecting the genetic architecture of closely related quantitative traits.</p>