ArticleGenome medicine2022
Illuminating links between cis-regulators and trans-acting variants in the human prefrontal cortex.
Article in Genome medicine, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- Integrating cell-type-specific gene expression and genome-wide associations identifies risk genes for schizophrenia.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- Co-expression-based models improve eQTL predictions for transcriptome-wide association studies and highlight new schizophrenia-associated genes.Nature genetics · 2026Article
- Integrating multi-omics and multi-context QTL data with GWAS reveals the genetic architecture of complex traits and improves the discovery of risk genes.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Schizophrenia-Related Synaptic Dysfunction and Abnormal Sensorimotor Gating in Akap11-Deficient Mice.Schizophrenia bulletin · 2026Article
- Article
- NetREm: Network Regression Embeddings reveal cell-type transcription factor coordination for gene regulation.Bioinformatics advances · 2025Article
- Single-cell genomics and regulatory networks for 388 human brains.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- Single-cell genomics and regulatory networks for 388 human brains.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Adjusting for genetic confounders in transcriptome-wide association studies improves discovery of risk genes of complex traits.Nature genetics · 2024Article
- Systematic investigation of allelic regulatory activity of schizophrenia-associated common variants.Cell genomics · 2023Article
- Schizophrenia risk conferred by rare protein-truncating variants is conserved across diverse human populations.Nature genetics · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundNeuropsychiatric disorders afflict a large portion of the global population and constitute a significant source of disability worldwide. Although Genome-wide Association Studies (GWAS) have identified many disorder-associated variants, the underlying regulatory mechanisms linking them to disorders remain elusive, especially those involving distant genomic elements. Expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) constitute a powerful means of providing this missing link. However, most eQTL studies in human brains have focused exclusively on cis-eQTLs, which link variants to nearby genes (i.e., those within 1 Mb of a variant). A complete understanding of disease etiology requires a clearer understanding of trans-regulatory mechanisms, which, in turn, entails a detailed analysis of the relationships between variants and expression changes in distant genes.
methodsBy leveraging large datasets from the PsychENCODE consortium, we conducted a genome-wide survey of trans-eQTLs in the human dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. We also performed colocalization and mediation analyses to identify mediators in trans-regulation and use trans-eQTLs to link GWAS loci to schizophrenia risk genes.
resultsWe identified ~80,000 candidate trans-eQTLs (at FDR<0.25) that influence the expression of ~10K target genes (i.e., "trans-eGenes"). We found that many variants associated with these candidate trans-eQTLs overlap with known cis-eQTLs. Moreover, for >60% of these variants (by colocalization), the cis-eQTL's target gene acts as a mediator for the trans-eQTL SNP's effect on the trans-eGene, highlighting examples of cis-mediation as essential for trans-regulation. Furthermore, many of these colocalized variants fall into a discernable pattern wherein cis-eQTL's target is a transcription factor or RNA-binding protein, which, in turn, targets the gene associated with the candidate trans-eQTL. Finally, we show that trans-regulatory mechanisms provide valuable insights into psychiatric disorders: beyond what had been possible using only cis-eQTLs, we link an additional 23 GWAS loci and 90 risk genes (using colocalization between candidate trans-eQTLs and schizophrenia GWAS loci).
conclusionsWe demonstrate that the transcriptional architecture of the human brain is orchestrated by both cis- and trans-regulatory variants and found that trans-eQTLs provide insights into brain-disease biology.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.