Alexander Haglund, Verena Zuber, Maya Abouzeid, Yifei Yang, Jeong Hun Ko, Liv Wiemann, Maria Otero-Jimenez, Louwai Muhammed, Rahel Feleke, Alexi Nott, James D. Mills, Liisi Laaniste, Djordje O. Gveric, Daniel Clode, Ann C. Babtie, Susanna Pagni, Ravishankara Bellampalli, Alyma Somani, Karina McDade, Jasper J. Anink, Lucia Mesarosova, Nurun Fancy, Nanet Willumsen, Amy Smith, Johanna Jackson, Javier Alegre-Abarrategui, Eleonora Aronica, Paul M. Matthews, Maria Thom, Sanjay M. Sisodiya, Prashant K. Srivastava, Dheeraj Malhotra, Julien Bryois, Leonardo Bottolo, Michael R. Johnson <<<

Abstract Gene expression quantitative trait loci are widely used to infer relationships between genes and central nervous system (CNS) phenotypes; however, the effect of brain disease on these inferences is unclear. Using 2,348,438 single-nuclei profiles from 391 disease-case and control brains, we report 13,939 genes whose expression correlated with genetic variation, of which 16.7–40.8% (depending on cell type) showed disease-dependent allelic effects. Across 501 colocalizations for 30 CNS traits, 23.6% had a disease dependency, even after adjusting for disease status. To estimate the unconfounded effect of genes on outcomes, we repeated the analysis using nondiseased brains (n = 183) and reported an additional 91 colocalizations not present in the larger mixed disease and control dataset, demonstrating enhanced interpretation of disease-associated variants. Principled implementation of single-cell Mendelian randomization in control-only brains identified 140 putatively causal gene–trait associations, of which 11 were replicated in the UK Biobank, prioritizing candidate peripheral biomarkers predictive of CNS outcomes. <<<

Lovisa Franzén, Martina Olsson Lindvall, Michael Hühn, Victoria Ptasinski, Laura Setyo, Benjamin P. Keith, Astrid Collin, Steven Oag, Thomas Volckaert, Annika Borde, Joakim Lundeberg, Julia Lindgren, Graham Belfield, Sonya Jackson, Anna Ollerstam, Marianna Stamou, Patrik L. Ståhl, Jorrit J. Hornberg <<<

AbstractIdiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a progressive lung disease with poor prognosis and limited treatment options. Efforts to identify effective treatments are thwarted by limited understanding of IPF pathogenesis and poor translatability of available preclinical models. Here we generated spatially resolved transcriptome maps of human IPF (n = 4) and bleomycin-induced mouse pulmonary fibrosis (n = 6) to address these limitations. We uncovered distinct fibrotic niches in the IPF lung, characterized by aberrant alveolar epithelial cells in a microenvironment dominated by transforming growth factor beta signaling alongside predicted regulators, such as TP53 and APOE. We also identified a clear divergence between the arrested alveolar regeneration in the IPF fibrotic niches and the active tissue repair in the acutely fibrotic mouse lung. Our study offers in-depth insights into the IPF transcriptional landscape and proposes alveolar regeneration as a promising therapeutic strategy for IPF. <<<