학술논문
Discovering metabolic disease gene interactions by correlated effects on cellular morphology.
Document Type
article
Author
Jiao, Yang; Ahmed, Umer; Sim, MF Michelle; Bejar, Andrea; Zhang, Xiaolan; Talukder, M Mesbah Uddin; Rice, Robert; Flannick, Jason; Podgornaia, Anna I; Reilly, Dermot F; Engreitz, Jesse M; Kost-Alimova, Maria; Hartland, Kate; Mercader, Josep-Maria; Georges, Sara; Wagh, Vilas; Tadin-Strapps, Marija; Doench, John G; Edwardson, J Michael; Rochford, Justin J; Rosen, Evan D; Majithia, Amit R
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Subject
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Abstract
OBJECTIVE:Impaired expansion of peripheral fat contributes to the pathogenesis of insulin resistance and Type 2 Diabetes (T2D). We aimed to identify novel disease-gene interactions during adipocyte differentiation. METHODS:Genes in disease-associated loci for T2D, adiposity and insulin resistance were ranked according to expression in human adipocytes. The top 125 genes were ablated in human pre-adipocytes via CRISPR/CAS9 and the resulting cellular phenotypes quantified during adipocyte differentiation with high-content microscopy and automated image analysis. Morphometric measurements were extracted from all images and used to construct morphologic profiles for each gene. RESULTS:Over 107 morphometric measurements were obtained. Clustering of the morphologic profiles accross all genes revealed a group of 14 genes characterized by decreased lipid accumulation, and enriched for known lipodystrophy genes. For two lipodystrophy genes, BSCL2 and AGPAT2, sub-clusters with PLIN1 and CEBPA identifed by morphological similarity were validated by independent experiments as novel protein-protein and gene regulatory interactions. CONCLUSIONS:A morphometric approach in adipocytes can resolve multiple cellular mechanisms for metabolic disease loci; this approach enables mechanistic interrogation of the hundreds of metabolic disease loci whose function still remains unknown.