Nature Genetics identifies 10 Crohn's disease-related genes

An international consortium of researchers has identified genetic variants in 10 genes that increase a person's susceptibility

The study, led by scientists from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Broad Institute at Harvard University, is the largest study to date focused on rare variants associated with Crohn's disease and is published today in the

Crohn's disease (CD) is a debilitating disease

With a few rare exceptions, CDs do not have a single genetic cause

In the study, researchers at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and the Broad Institute set out to identify rare genetic variants

This identified genetic variants in 6 gene regions in the genome that had not previously been thought to be associated

Dr Aleksejs Sazonovs, from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, lead author of the study, said: "Most people will have some genetic variants that increase susceptibility to inflammatory bowel disease because they are so

The remaining 4 genes found by the team are located in the genomic region previously associated with IBD through GWAS

There is a rare variant in the TAGAP gene that can reduce a person's likelihood of

"The key when thinking about how to develop new therapies is that we can pinpoint specific genetic variants that increase or decrease a person's risk of developing the disease," the authors

The next step is to extend the method to ulcerative colitis and increase the scale of sampling, hoping to find all the variants and genes

Editor's Notes:

Exomes make up 1-2% of the genome encoding proteins

Mesenchymal cells make up most of the body's soft or connective tissue, such as muscles and ligaments

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Venkataraman and Kai Yuan et al.