Identification of Causal Genes of COVID-19 Using the SMR Method.

ABSTRACT: Since the first report of COVID-19 in December 2019, more than 100 million people have been infected with SARS-CoV-2. Despite ongoing research, there is still limited knowledge about the genetic causes of COVID-19. To resolve this problem, we applied the SMR method to analyze the genes involved in COVID-19 pathogenesis by the integration of multiple omics data. Here, we assessed the SNPs associated with COVID-19 risk from the GWAS data of Spanish and Italian patients and lung eQTL data from the GTEx project. Then, GWAS and eQTL data were integrated by summary-data-based (SMR) methods using SNPs as instrumental variables (IVs). As a result, six protein-coding and five non-protein-coding genes regulated by nine SNPs were identified as significant risk factors for COVID-19. Functional analysi

SUBMITTER: Zong Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8287881 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature