Enjoyed telling the stories of some great human genetics papers published in the first quarter of this year.
The field is moving fast, and many exciting works are getting out every day. I enjoy curating papers that together paint a big picture of the field's progress and sharing them in social media, blogs and podcasts. It's gratifying to see that many benefit from reading and listening to things that I share.
I had the privilege to appear on The Genetics Podcast (I am a big fan) hosted by
@patrick_j_short in 2022 and 2023 to talk about the most interesting stories published in the respective years. Inspired by the many positive feedbacks, this year, the Sano Genetics team has invited me to do a quarterly round up to help others keep up with the fast-growing human genetics literature. The first one is out now.
The main theme of this round up is 'noncoding variants', but I also talk about emerging new approaches in GWAS to dissect the disease biology.
Under the topic of noncoding variants, I chose three exciting papers that I liked so much. These papers hint us that we will see more fascinating discoveries based on noncoding genome this year and upcoming ones.
The first one is a paper (
nature.com/articles/s41586-0…) published in Nature by
@EKFarley and colleagues on an elegant mechanism through which certain transcription factors control tissue-specific expression of their targets with extraordinary specificity (
x.com/doctorveera/status/174…).
The second one is a preprint by
@VGaneshMDPhD,
@AnneOtation and colleagues on a remarkable discovery of a noncoding de novo mutation that deletes a lncRNA (CHASERR) and overshoots the expression of a nearby gene CHD2 resulting in a neurodevelopmental disorder
(
x.com/VGaneshMDPhD/status/17…). This is one of the rarest examples to date to shed light on the mechanics of the lncRNA mediated transcriptional control and their therapeutic potential. Another such example is lncRNA mediated imprinting of UBE3A, which is now exploited to treat Angelman syndrome (
x.com/doctorveera/status/168…).
The third one is my favorite: a preprint by
@roddywalsh,
@cbezzina1 and colleagues on the discovery of a South-East Asians-enriched noncoding variant as major genetic cause of Brugada syndrome (
x.com/doctorveera/status/175…). There is an absolutely fascinating backstory behind this discovery.
The final one is a paper published in Nature Medicine by
@miriam_udler and colleagues on a creative analysis that disentangles the results of a massive type 2 diabetes GWAS and shed lights on ancestry-specific enrichment of biological pathways. Many great insights to appreciate from this amazing work (
x.com/doctorveera/status/176…)
More such roundups are planned this year. Many thanks to
@patrick_j_short and
@sanogenetics team for the opportunity. It's inspiring to see Patrick's dedication to science communication, and I am grateful to be able to play a tiny role in that.