ORCID Profile
0000-0002-3608-845X
Current Organisation
University of Oxford
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Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 05-06-2012
Publisher: IEEE
Date: 11-2013
Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 09-04-2013
Abstract: 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.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 12-2012
DOI: 10.1038/NATURE11677
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 18-09-2014
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 08-2013
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 07-03-2013
DOI: 10.1093/HMG/DDT116
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 29-05-2013
DOI: 10.1038/NG0613-712B
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 04-11-2014
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 10-02-2013
DOI: 10.1038/NG.2554
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 13-10-2017
DOI: 10.1038/S41467-017-00934-5
Abstract: Genomic analysis of longevity offers the potential to illuminate the biology of human aging. Here, using genome-wide association meta-analysis of 606,059 parents’ survival, we discover two regions associated with longevity ( HLA-DQA1/DRB1 and LPA ). We also validate previous suggestions that APOE , CHRNA3/5 , CDKN2A/B , SH2B3 and FOXO3A influence longevity. Next we show that giving up smoking, educational attainment, openness to new experience and high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol levels are most positively genetically correlated with lifespan while susceptibility to coronary artery disease (CAD), cigarettes smoked per day, lung cancer, insulin resistance and body fat are most negatively correlated. We suggest that the effect of education on lifespan is principally mediated through smoking while the effect of obesity appears to act via CAD. Using instrumental variables, we suggest that an increase of one body mass index unit reduces lifespan by 7 months while 1 year of education adds 11 months to expected lifespan.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 11-02-2015
DOI: 10.1038/NATURE14177
Publisher: Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Date: 07-12-2016
Abstract: Parathyroid hormone (PTH) is a primary calcium regulatory hormone. Elevated serum PTH concentrations in primary and secondary hyperparathyroidism have been associated with bone disease, hypertension, and in some studies, cardiovascular mortality. Genetic causes of variation in circulating PTH concentrations are incompletely understood. We performed a genome-wide association study of serum PTH concentrations among 29,155 participants of European ancestry from 13 cohort studies ( n =22,653 and n =6502 in discovery and replication analyses, respectively). We evaluated the association of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with natural log-transformed PTH concentration adjusted for age, sex, season, study site, and principal components of ancestry. We discovered associations of SNPs from five independent regions with serum PTH concentration, including the strongest association with rs6127099 upstream of CYP24A1 ( P =4.2 × 10 −53 ), a gene that encodes the primary catabolic enzyme for 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D and 25-dihydroxyvitamin D. Each additional copy of the minor allele at this SNP associated with 7% higher serum PTH concentration. The other SNPs associated with serum PTH concentration included rs4074995 within RGS14 ( P =6.6 × 10 −17 ), rs219779 adjacent to CLDN14 ( P =3.5 × 10 −16 ), rs4443100 near RTDR1 ( P =8.7 × 10 −9 ), and rs73186030 near CASR ( P =4.8 × 10 −8 ). Of these five SNPs, rs6127099, rs4074995, and rs219779 replicated. Thus, common genetic variants located near genes involved in vitamin D metabolism and calcium and renal phosphate transport associated with differences in circulating PTH concentrations. Future studies could identify the causal variants at these loci, and the clinical and functional relevance of these variants should be pursued.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 23-12-2012
DOI: 10.1038/NG.2500
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 11-02-2015
DOI: 10.1038/NATURE14132
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Federico Murgia.