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- Klaric, Lucija, et al.
(författare)
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Mendelian randomisation identifies alternative splicing of the FAS death receptor as a mediator of severe COVID-19.
- 2021
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Ingår i: medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences. - : Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. ; , s. 1-28
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Severe COVID-19 is characterised by immunopathology and epithelial injury. Proteomic studies have identified circulating proteins that are biomarkers of severe COVID-19, but cannot distinguish correlation from causation. To address this, we performed Mendelian randomisation (MR) to identify proteins that mediate severe COVID-19. Using protein quantitative trait loci (pQTL) data from the SCALLOP consortium, involving meta-analysis of up to 26,494 individuals, and COVID-19 genome-wide association data from the Host Genetics Initiative, we performed MR for 157 COVID-19 severity protein biomarkers. We identified significant MR results for five proteins: FAS, TNFRSF10A, CCL2, EPHB4 and LGALS9. Further evaluation of these candidates using sensitivity analyses and colocalization testing provided strong evidence to implicate the apoptosis-associated cytokine receptor FAS as a causal mediator of severe COVID-19. This effect was specific to severe disease. Using RNA-seq data from 4,778 individuals, we demonstrate that the pQTL at the FAS locus results from genetically influenced alternate splicing causing skipping of exon 6. We show that the risk allele for very severe COVID-19 increases the proportion of transcripts lacking exon 6, and thereby increases soluble FAS. Soluble FAS acts as a decoy receptor for FAS-ligand, inhibiting apoptosis induced through membrane-bound FAS. In summary, we demonstrate a novel genetic mechanism that contributes to risk of severe of COVID-19, highlighting a pathway that may be a promising therapeutic target.
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| 2. |
- Herrera-Rivero, Marisol, et al.
(författare)
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Exploring the genetics of lithium response in bipolar disorders.
- 2023
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Ingår i: Research square.
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Lithium (Li) remains the treatment of choice for bipolar disorders (BP). Its mood-stabilizing effects help reduce the long-term burden of mania, depression and suicide risk in patients with BP. It also has been shown to have beneficial effects on disease-associated conditions, including sleep and cardiovascular disorders. However, the individual responses to Li treatment vary within and between diagnostic subtypes of BP (e.g. BP-I and BP-II) according to the clinical presentation. Moreover, long-term Li treatment has been linked to adverse side-effects that are a cause of concern and non-adherence, including the risk of developing chronic medical conditions such as thyroid and renal disease. In recent years, studies by the Consortium on Lithium Genetics (ConLiGen) have uncovered a number of genetic factors that contribute to the variability in Li treatment response in patients with BP. Here, we leveraged the ConLiGen cohort (N=2,064) to investigate the genetic basis of Li effects in BP. For this, we studied how Li response and linked genes associate with the psychiatric symptoms and polygenic load for medical comorbidities, placing particular emphasis on identifying differences between BP-I and BP-II.We found that clinical response to Li treatment, measured with the Alda scale, was associated with a diminished burden of mania, depression, substance and alcohol abuse, psychosis and suicidal ideation in patients with BP-I and, in patients with BP-II, of depression only. Our genetic analyses showed that a stronger clinical response to Li was modestly related to lower polygenic load for diabetes and hypertension in BP-I but not BP-II. Moreover, our results suggested that a number of genes that have been previously linked to Li response variability in BP differentially relate to the psychiatric symptomatology, particularly to the numbers of manic and depressive episodes, and to the polygenic load for comorbid conditions, including diabetes, hypertension and hypothyroidism.Taken together, our findings suggest that the effects of Li on symptomatology and comorbidity in BP are partially modulated by common genetic factors, with differential effects between BP-I and BP-II.
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| 3. |
- Agarwala, Hemlata, et al.
(författare)
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An Elusive Intermediate Uncovered in the Pathway for Electrochemical Carbon Dioxide Reduction by Ruthenium Polypyridyl Catalyst - Combined Spectroscopic and Computational Investigation
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- A scrutinous study of the catalytic cycle for electrochemical CO2 reduction by the ruthenium 2,2:6,2-terpyridine (tpy) 2,2-bipyridine (bpy) class of catalysts is presented. An unprecedented 2-(C,O)-carboxycarboxylatoruthenium(II) metalacyclic intermediate, critical for C-O bond dissociation at low overpotentials, so far precluded from mechanistic considerations of polypyridyl transition metal complex catalysts, is unearthed by infra-red spectroscopy coupled to controlled potential electrolysis in corroboration with density functional theory (DFT) investigations. Thermodynamic and kinetic analyses of the intermediate reveal the important role of the structural flexibility of polypyridyl ligands and fine electronic tunability of the metal center, along with kinetic trans effect, in propelling catalysis at lower overpotentials. The choice of metal center, Ru in the present case, points to the fact that the requirement of an additional Lewis acid to enhance C-O bond dissociation, hence increase the catalytic rate or turnover, can be circumvented.
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| 6. |
- Beyer, Jan, et al.
(författare)
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Strong suppression of spin generation at a Fano resonance in a semiconductor nanostructure
- 2012
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We observe remarkable, complete suppression of spin generation under optical excitation in a thin InAs/GaAs wetting layer close to the light-hole excitonic resonance, leading to zero electron spin polarization as monitored by adjacent InAs quantum dots. The suppression is attributed to efficient spin relaxation/scattering at the Fano resonance between the light-hole exciton states and the heavy-hole continuum of the wetting layer. The complete suppression is found to remain effective up to temperatures exceeding 100 K.
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| 9. |
- Chen, Dorothy M, et al.
(författare)
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Transcriptome-Wide Association Analysis Identifies Novel Candidate Susceptibility Genes for Prostate-Specific Antigen Levels in Men Without Prostate Cancer
- 2023
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Deciphering the genetic basis of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels may improve their utility to screen for prostate cancer (PCa). We thus conducted a transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) of PSA levels using genome-wide summary statistics from 95,768 PCa-free men, the MetaXcan framework, and gene prediction models trained in Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project data. Tissue-specific analyses identified 41 statistically significant (p < 0.05/12,192 = 4.10e-6) associations in whole blood and 39 statistically significant (p < 0.05/13,844 = 3.61e-6) associations in prostate tissue, with 18 genes associated in both tissues. Cross-tissue analyses that combined associations across 45 tissues identified 155 genes that were statistically significantly (p < 0.05/22,249 = 2.25e-6) associated with PSA levels. Based on conditional analyses that assessed whether TWAS associations were attributable to a lead GWAS variant, we found 20 novel genes (11 single-tissue, 9 cross-tissue) that were associated with PSA levels in the TWAS. Of these novel genes, five showed evidence of colocalization (colocalization probability > 0.5): EXOSC9, CCNA2, HIST1H2BN, RP11-182L21.6 , and RP11-327J17.2 . Six of the 20 novel genes are not known to impact PCa risk. These findings yield new hypotheses for genetic factors underlying PSA levels that should be further explored toward improving our understanding of PSA biology.
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