Premium
Co‐localization of differentially expressed genes and shared susceptibility loci in human autoimmunity
Author(s) -
Aune Thomas M.,
Parker Joel S.,
Maas Kevin,
Liu Zheng,
Olsen Nancy J.,
Moore Jason H.
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
genetic epidemiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.301
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 1098-2272
pISSN - 0741-0395
DOI - 10.1002/gepi.20013
Subject(s) - biology , genetics , gene , genetic linkage , concordance , autoimmune disease , autoimmunity , genome , disease , linkage (software) , human genome , genetic predisposition , computational biology , immune system , medicine , antibody , pathology
Autoimmune diseases arise from complex interactions between environmental and genetic factors. Genetic linkage scans show that different autoimmune diseases share overlapping susceptibility loci. Lymphocytes from individuals with different autoimmune diseases, as well as unaffected first‐degree relatives, also share a common gene expression profile. We sought to determine if genes within this autoimmune expression profile were nonrandomly distributed in the genome and if their distribution overlapped with shared disease susceptibility loci. We found that differentially expressed genes were distributed in a nonrandom fashion in chromosomal domains within the genome. Furthermore, positions of these domains were not statistically different from a number of shared autoimmune disease susceptibility loci. To our knowledge, this is the first study showing concordance between gene expression and genetic linkage results in common complex multifactorial human diseases. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.