The GTEx Consortium atlas of genetic regulatory effects across human tissues
François Aguet, Shankara Anand, Kristin Ardlie, Stacey Gabriel, Gad Getz, Aaron Graubert, Kane Hadley, Robert E. Handsaker, Katherine Huang, Seva Kashin, Xiao Li, Daniel G. MacArthur, Samuel R. Meier, Jared L. Nedzel, Duyen T. Nguyen, Ayellet V. Segrè, Ellen Todres, Brunilda Balliu, Alvaro Barbeira, Alexis Battle, Rodrigo Bonazzola, Andrew Brown, Christopher Brown, Stephane E. Castel, Donald F. Conrad, Daniel J. Cotter, Nancy J. Cox, Sayantan Das, Olivia M. de Goede, Emmanouil T. Dermitzakis, Jonah Einson, Barbara E. Engelhardt, Eleazar Eskin, Tiffany Eulalio, Nicole M. Ferraro, Elise D. Flynn, Laure Frésard, Eric R. Gamazon, Diego Garrido-Martín, Nicole R. Gay, Michael J. Gloudemans, Roderic Guigó, Andrew R. Hame, Yuan He, Paul Hoffman, Farhad Hormozdiari, Lei Hou, Hae Kyung Im, Brian Jo, Silva Kasela, Manolis Kellis, Sarah Kim-Hellmuth, Alan Kwong, Tuuli Lappalainen, Xin Li, Yanyu Liang, Serghei Mangul, Pejman Mohammadi, Stephen B. Montgomery, Manuel Muñoz-Aguirre, Daniel Nachun, Andrew B. Nobel, Meritxell Oliva, YoSon Park, Yongjin Park, Princy Parsana, Abhiram Rao, Ferrán Reverter, John M. Rouhana, Chiara Sabatti, Ashis Saha, Matthew Stephens, Barbara E. Stranger, Benjamin J. Strober, Nicole A. Teran, Ana Viñuela, Gao Wang, Xiaoquan Wen, Fred A. Wright, Valentin Wucher, Yuxin Zou, Pedro G. Ferreira, Gen Li, Marta Melé, Esti Yeger‐Lotem, Mary E. Barcus, Debra Bradbury, Tanya Krubit, Jeffrey A. McLean, Liqun Qi, Karna Robinson, Nancy Roche, Anna Marie Smith, Leslie H. Sobin, David E. Tabor, Anita H. Undale, Jason Bridge, Lori E. Brigham, Barbara A. Foster, Bryan M. Gillard
Abstract
The Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project was established to characterize genetic effects on the transcriptome across human tissues and to link these regulatory mechanisms to trait and disease associations. Here, we present analyses of the version 8 data, examining 15,201 RNA-sequencing samples from 49 tissues of 838 postmortem donors. We comprehensively characterize genetic associations for gene expression and splicing in cis and trans, showing that regulatory associations are found for almost all genes, and describe the underlying molecular mechanisms and their contribution to allelic heterogeneity and pleiotropy of complex traits. Leveraging the large diversity of tissues, we provide insights into the tissue specificity of genetic effects and show that cell type composition is a key factor in understanding gene regulatory mechanisms in human tissues.