Multilayer modelling of the human transcriptome and biological mechanisms of complex diseases and traits

Abstract Here, we performed a comprehensive intra-tissue and inter-tissue multilayer network analysis of the human transcriptome. We generated an atlas of communities in gene co-expression networks in 49 tissues (GTEx v8), evaluated their tissue specificity, and investigated their methodological imp...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Tiago Azevedo, Giovanna Maria Dimitri, Pietro Lió, Eric R. Gamazon
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/9a69e4735721400da7d906b6896f785e
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:Abstract Here, we performed a comprehensive intra-tissue and inter-tissue multilayer network analysis of the human transcriptome. We generated an atlas of communities in gene co-expression networks in 49 tissues (GTEx v8), evaluated their tissue specificity, and investigated their methodological implications. UMAP embeddings of gene expression from the communities (representing nearly 18% of all genes) robustly identified biologically-meaningful clusters. Notably, new gene expression data can be embedded into our algorithmically derived models to accelerate discoveries in high-dimensional molecular datasets and downstream diagnostic or prognostic applications. We demonstrate the generalisability of our approach through systematic testing in external genomic and transcriptomic datasets. Methodologically, prioritisation of the communities in a transcriptome-wide association study of the biomarker C-reactive protein (CRP) in 361,194 individuals in the UK Biobank identified genetically-determined expression changes associated with CRP and led to considerably improved performance. Furthermore, a deep learning framework applied to the communities in nearly 11,000 tumors profiled by The Cancer Genome Atlas across 33 different cancer types learned biologically-meaningful latent spaces, representing metastasis (p < 2.2 × 10−16) and stemness (p < 2.2 × 10−16). Our study provides a rich genomic resource to catalyse research into inter-tissue regulatory mechanisms, and their downstream consequences on human disease.