Target genes, variants, tissues and transcriptional pathways influencing human serum urate levels.

Elevated serum urate levels cause gout and correlate with cardiometabolic diseases via poorly understood mechanisms. We performed a trans-ancestry genome-wide association study of serum urate in 457,690 individuals, identifying 183 loci (147 previously unknown) that improve the prediction of gout in an independent cohort of 334,880 individuals. Serum urate showed significant genetic correlations with many cardiometabolic traits, with genetic causality analyses supporting a substantial role for pleiotropy. Enrichment analysis, fine-mapping of urate-associated loci and colocalization with gene expression in 47 tissues implicated the kidney and liver as the main target organs and prioritized potentially causal genes and variants, including the transcriptional master regulators in the liver and kidney, HNF1A and HNF4A. Experimental validation showed that HNF4A transactivated the promoter of ABCG2, encoding a major urate transporter, in kidney cells, and that HNF4A p.Thr139Ile is a functional variant. Transcriptional coregulation within and across organs may be a general mechanism underlying the observed pleiotropy between urate and cardiometabolic traits.The Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Project was supported by the Common Fund of the Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health, and by NCI, NHGRI, NHLBI, NIDA, NIMH, and NINDS. Variant annotation was supported by software resources provided via the Caché Campus program of the InterSystems GmbH to Alexander Teumer

Qu’est-ce que l’espace méditerranéen au Moyen Âge?

Ces dernières années, la Méditerranée a été régulièrement invoquée par les historiens de l’art à titre de cadre conceptuel – plus que géographique – nous permettant d’appréhender quelques-unes des dynamiques les plus remarquables qui sous-tendent la production, l’usage et la réception des artefacts dans le monde médiéval. De nombreux spécialistes en histoire de l’art ont ressenti le besoin de traverser les frontières séparant les domaines de recherche traditionnels que sont l’Occident médiéva..

Sacred Space and Torah Shrines in Late Antique Synagogues

Peer reviewe

Veil and shroud: Eastern references and allegoric functions in the textile imagery of a twelfth-century gospel book from Braunschweig

This article discusses two medieval textile-inspired images that evoke the repeat of Eastern silk, and argues that so-called textile-pages in illuminated German manuscripts are not merely a sophisticated form of decoration, but that textile imagery generates iconological meaning in certain contexts and serves specific functions. The article proposes an iconological reading of two textile-pages in the Aegidien Gospels, a twelfth-century manuscript. It identifies one textile image as a visual commentary on the allegory of scripture as a veil of revelation, and the other as a representation of the shroud, which is shown to have mnemonic and contemplative functions in relation to the historic narrative and sacred truth of Christ’s death and resurrection. A kufesque inscription in the image of the shroud marks the depicted textile as an object of Eastern origin, and can be interpreted as a reference to the Holy Land in particular. By visually evoking the holy site of Christ’s tomb, the shroud image participates in a transfer of loca sancta from Jerusalem to twelfth-century Braunschweig, and in turn, connects with other holy sites that mark a larger sacred landscape of medieval Saxony. Interpreting the two textile-pages in the Aegidien Gospels from the viewpoint of recent approaches towards medieval court culture, textile imagery in this manuscript is shown to not be the result of the passive copying of textile patterns; rather, it is a distinct artistic contribution and form of appropriation that reflects the spiritual needs of the twelfth-century Saxon audience

Antiquité/Moyen Âge

L’histoire, l’histoire de l’art et l’archéologie s’imbriquent à travers les figures exceptionnelles de Jacques Le Goff et Tonio Hölscher alors que la fécondité des catégories territoriales révèlent ici Babylone, la Méditerranée ou encore le Saint-Empire romain germanique. L’actualité de la recherche s’écrit aussi dans une confrontation de la discipline à l’histoire des corps et des dieux, comme elle redéfinit ses objets et ses moyens en se fondant sur le canon de la Grèce antique, ou en prenant de front la question de la situation des savoirs et de la migration du savant : Erwin Panofsky par Johanne Lamoureux. Ce numéro est en vente sur le site du Comptoir des presses d'universités