Deconvolution of bulk blood eQTL effects into immune cell subpopulations.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) studies are used to interpret the function of disease-associated genetic risk factors. To date, most eQTL analyses have been conducted in bulk tissues, such as whole blood and tissue biopsies, which are likely to mask the cell type-context of the eQTL regulatory effects. Although this context can be investigated by generating transcriptional profiles from purified cell subpopulations, current methods to do this are labor-intensive and expensive. We introduce a new method, Decon2, as a framework for estimating cell proportions using expression profiles from bulk blood samples (Decon-cell) followed by deconvolution of cell type eQTLs (Decon-eQTL).

Results

The estimated cell proportions from Decon-cell agree with experimental

SUBMITTER: Aguirre-Gamboa R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7291428 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature