Links between 127 genes and immune diseases, gaining insight into the timing of gene activity during cell activation

In a first-of-its-kind experiment, researchers have discovered links between 127 genes and immune diseases, providing new insights into the sequence and timing of gene activity during T cell activation, which regulates the body's immune response key proce.

The study, led by researchers at Open Targets, the Wellcome Sanger Institute and GSK, is published today (26 May 2022) in the journal Nature Geneti.

T cells are a group of white blood cells that help manage the body's immune syst.

T cell activation is the first step in the immune system's response to infecti.

In the new study, researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and GSK used single-cell RNA sequencing to analyse more than 650,000 individual cells, mapping the timing of gene activity for each cell subtype during T cell activati.

The team identified more than 6,400 genes involved in the activation proce.

The study's first author, Dr Blagoje Soskic from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "By analysing multiple time points during T cell activation, our study highlights that gene regulation can be targeted to specific cellular stat.

By classifying the genes involved in T cell activation, this work provides the first step towards gaining insights into immune processes and how they go awry in disea.

John Lepore, senior vice president and head of research at GSK, said: "This study provides a novel, rich dataset that informed our early discoveries, which we are actively using to select genetically informative drug targets for Further validation experimen.

While this study focused on genes associated with 13 immune diseases, the methods and data generated can be applied to identify genes associated with other diseas.

The study's senior author Dr Gosia Trynka, Director of Open Targets Experimental Science from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, said: "T cells are particularly dynamic cells, so being able to capture their activation in such detail is an important achieveme.

article title

Immune disease risk variants regulate gene expression dynamics during CD4+ T cell activation