Nature Communications (Jan 2021)

SLE non-coding genetic risk variant determines the epigenetic dysfunction of an immune cell specific enhancer that controls disease-critical microRNA expression

  • Guojun Hou,
  • Isaac T. W. Harley,
  • Xiaoming Lu,
  • Tian Zhou,
  • Ning Xu,
  • Chao Yao,
  • Yuting Qin,
  • Ye Ouyang,
  • Jianyang Ma,
  • Xinyi Zhu,
  • Xiang Yu,
  • Hong Xu,
  • Dai Dai,
  • Huihua Ding,
  • Zhihua Yin,
  • Zhizhong Ye,
  • Jun Deng,
  • Mi Zhou,
  • Yuanjia Tang,
  • Bahram Namjou,
  • Ya Guo,
  • Matthew T. Weirauch,
  • Leah C. Kottyan,
  • John B. Harley,
  • Nan Shen

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20460-1
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
pp. 1 – 19

Abstract

Read online

Enhancers shape gene expression patterns and are involved in disease pathogenesis. Here the authors demonstrate a strategy to screen functional regulatory elements for non-coding RNAs ― illustrated with miR-146a ― and link autoimmune disease risk genetic variants to autoimmune disease etiology.