Mapping genetic effects on splicing in ten thousand post-mortem brain samples reveals novel mediators of neurological disease risk.

ABSTRACT: Alternative splicing shapes isoform diversity and gene dosage but how genetic variation impacts splicing in brain disease is still not fully characterized. We assembled BigBrain, a multi-ancestry resource of 10,725 bulk RNA-seq profiles with matched genotypes from 4,656 individuals across 43 tissue-cohort pairs, and mapped 68,358 cis-sQTLs affecting 10,966 genes using mixed-model meta-analysis. Using SuSiE, we finemapped over half of these sQTLs into 95% credible sets, frequently to a single variant near splice sites. We further annotated variants predicted to alter dosage through frameshifts or nonsense-mediated decay or disrupt protein domains. Colocalization with seven neurodegenerative and psychiatric GWAS highlighted 97 loci where alternative splicing appears to mediate genetic

SUBMITTER: Real A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12486005 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature