PreprintCited by 189Pancreatic function and diabetesGenomics and Chromatin DynamicsDiabetes and associated disorders

Single cell chromatin accessibility reveals pancreatic islet cell type- and state-specific regulatory programs of diabetes risk

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Chiou, Joshua, Zeng, Chun, Cheng, Zhang, Han, Jee Yun, Schlichting, Michael, Huang, Serina, Wang, Jinzhao, Sui, Yinghui +10 more·2019·Nature Genetics

Preprint — published as 10.1038/s41588-021-00823-0

Abstract

Genetic risk variants for complex, multifactorial diseases are enriched in cis -regulatory elements. Single cell epigenomic technologies create new opportunities to dissect cell type-specific mechanisms of risk variants, yet this approach has not been widely applied to disease-relevant tissues. Given the central role of pancreatic islets in type 2 diabetes (T2D) pathophysiology, we generated accessible chromatin profiles from 14.2k islet cells and identified 13 cell clusters including multiple alpha, beta and delta cell clusters which represented hormone-producing and signal-responsive cell states. We cataloged 244,236 islet cell type accessible chromatin sites and identified transcription factors (TFs) underlying both lineage- and state-specific regulation. We measured the enrichment of T2D and glycemic trait GWAS for the accessible chromatin profiles of single cells, which revealed heterogeneity in the effects of beta cell states and TFs on fasting glucose and T2D risk. We further used machine learning to predict the cell type-specific regulatory function of genetic variants, and single cell co-accessibility to link distal sites to putative cell type-specific target genes. We localized 239 fine-mapped T2D risk signals to islet accessible chromatin, and further prioritized variants at these signals with predicted regulatory function and co-accessibility with target genes. At the KCNQ1 locus, the causal T2D variant rs231361 had predicted effects on an enhancer with beta cell-specific, long-range co-accessibility to the insulin promoter, and deletion of this enhancer reduced insulin gene and protein expression in human embryonic stem cell-derived beta cells. Our findings provide a cell type- and state-resolved map of gene regulation in human islets, illuminate likely mechanisms of T2D risk at hundreds of loci, and demonstrate the power of single cell epigenomics for interpreting complex disease genetics.

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  • Further clues to relationships between regulatory variants and their effector genes can be gathered from DNA proximity assays and single-cell data.

    “Further clues to the relationships between regulatory variants and their effector genes can be gathered from DNA proximity assays (such as Hi-C) and single-cell data113 (Fig. 2)”

    From A brief history of human disease genetics (2020) · cites this paper as [113]

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  1. Trapnell, C. et al. Pseudo-temporal ordering of individual cells reveals dynamics and regulators of cell fate decisions. Nat. Biotechnol. 32, 381 (2014).

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Authors
Chiou, J., Zeng, C., Cheng, Z., Han, J. Y., Schlichting, M., Huang, S., Wang, J., Sui, Y., Deogaygay, A., Okino, M.-L., Qiu, Y., Sun, Y., Kudtarkar, P., Fang, R., Preissl, S., Sander, M., Gorkin, D., & Gaulton, K. J.
Affiliations
  • University of California San Diego (US)
  • Emory University (US)
Corresponding author
  • Sander, Maike
  • Gorkin, David
  • Gaulton, Kyle J
Venue
Nature Genetics
Publisher
openRxiv
Published
2019-07-09
Volume
53
Issue
4
Pages
455-466
ISSN
1061-4036 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3149376923
Cited by
189
References
114
Citations by year
2026: 22 · 2025: 30 · 2024: 29 · 2023: 49 · 2022: 27 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 3
FWCI
29.80
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
cc-by-nc-nd
Locations
  • Nature Genetics (publishedVersion)
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
  • FreiDok plus (Universitätsbibliothek Freiburg) (submittedVersion)
Funders
  • U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DK105554, DK068471, DK105541, DK114650, DK120429)
  • National Institutes of Health (DK105554)
  • University of California, San Diego
  • National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (R01DK114650, U01DK105541, U01DK120429, R01DK068471, UM1DK105554, U01DK105554)
  • School of Medicine, University of California, San Diego
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Surgery › Pancreatic function and diabetes
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Chromatin Dynamics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Diabetes and associated disorders
Keywords
type 2 diabetes, pancreatic islets, single-nucleus ATAC-seq, chromatin accessibility, alpha cells, delta cells, islet cell types, transcription factor regulation, KCNQ1, combinatorial barcoding, single-cell epigenomics
MeSH terms
Human Embryonic Stem Cells, Blood Glucose, Cell Differentiation, Chromatin, Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2, Fasting, Multigene Family, Humans, Polymorphism, Genetic, Transcription Factors, Somatostatin-Secreting Cells, Gene Expression Profiling, Glucagon-Secreting Cells, Insulin-Secreting Cells, Pancreatic Polypeptide-Secreting Cells, KCNQ1 Potassium Channel, Genome-Wide Association Study, Epigenomics, Single-Cell Analysis, High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing

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