Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Publication Date

5-24-2024

Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-024-48394-y

PMID

38789417

PMCID

PMC11126610

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

May 2024

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Post-print

Abstract

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have become well-powered to detect loci associated with telomere length. However, no prior work has validated genes nominated by GWAS to examine their role in telomere length regulation. We conducted a multi-ancestry meta-analysis of 211,369 individuals and identified five novel association signals. Enrichment analyses of chromatin state and cell-type heritability suggested that blood/immune cells are the most relevant cell type to examine telomere length association signals. We validated specific GWAS associations by overexpressing KBTBD6 or POP5 and demonstrated that both lengthened telomeres. CRISPR/Cas9 deletion of the predicted causal regions in K562 blood cells reduced expression of these genes, demonstrating that these loci are related to transcriptional regulation of KBTBD6 and POP5. Our results demonstrate the utility of telomere length GWAS in the identification of telomere length regulation mechanisms and validate KBTBD6 and POP5 as genes affecting telomere length regulation.

Keywords

Humans, Genome-Wide Association Study, Telomere, K562 Cells, Telomere Homeostasis, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Gene Expression Regulation, CRISPR-Cas Systems

Published Open-Access

yes

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