Ye, J.; Gillespie, K.M.; Rodriguez, S. Unravelling the Roles of Susceptibility Loci for Autoimmune Diseases in the Post-GWAS Era. Genes2018, 9, 377.
Ye, J.; Gillespie, K.M.; Rodriguez, S. Unravelling the Roles of Susceptibility Loci for Autoimmune Diseases in the Post-GWAS Era. Genes 2018, 9, 377.
Ye, J.; Gillespie, K.M.; Rodriguez, S. Unravelling the Roles of Susceptibility Loci for Autoimmune Diseases in the Post-GWAS Era. Genes2018, 9, 377.
Ye, J.; Gillespie, K.M.; Rodriguez, S. Unravelling the Roles of Susceptibility Loci for Autoimmune Diseases in the Post-GWAS Era. Genes 2018, 9, 377.
Abstract
Although genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified several hundred loci associated with autoimmune diseases, their mechanistic insights are still poorly understood. The human genome is more complex than common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that are interrogated by GWAS arrays. Some structural variants such as insertions-deletions, copy number variations, and minisatellites that are not very well tagged by SNPs cannot be fully explored by GWAS. Therefore, it is possible that some of these loci may have large effects on autoimmune disease risk. In addition, other layers of regulations such as gene-gene interactions, epigenetic-determinants, gene and environmental interactions also contribute to the heritability of autoimmune diseases. This review focuses on discussing why studying these elements may allow us to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the aetiology of complex autoimmune traits.
Keywords
complex loci; autoimmune diseases
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
