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Decoding common and rare noncoding variant effects across cellular and developmental contexts

delete2026-06-15
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PRE
AI
A
Andrew R. Marderstein *
S
Soumya Kundu
E
Evin M. Padhi
S
Salil Deshpande
A
Austin Wang
E
Esther Robb
Y
Ying Sun
C
Chang Min Yun
D
Diego Pomales-Matos
Y
Yilin Xie
S
Serena H. Chang
I
Iris M. Chin
A
Aayushi J. Shah
Z
Zachary A. Gardell
M
M. Ryan Corces
D
Daniel Nachun
S
Selin Jessa
A
Anshul Kundaje *
S
Stephen B. Montgomery *
DOI:10.1038/s41588-026-02619-6delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Interpreting how noncoding variants act in specific cell types across human development is a major challenge. Here we generated 3 billion predictions from deep learning sequence models of chromatin accessibility across diverse fetal and adult cellular contexts. These prioritized functional variants and revealed a dichotomy: common variants are more cell-type-specific, whereas ultra-rare variants had larger and broader effects across cell types, with the strongest evidence of purifying selection in fetal neurons. Leveraging these insights, we developed FLARE (Functional Lasso Analysis of Regulatory Evolution), which integrates evolutionary constraint to prioritize noncoding variants with extreme regulatory effects. FLARE provided a general framework for studying regulatory variation, from de novo mutations in childhood disorders to rare variants underlying outlier adult brain expression and common variants enriched for schizophrenia heritability. Together, these results demonstrate how integrating single-cell chromatin accessibility, population genetics and deep learning can identify regulatory variants that influence human development and disease. This study contributes a resource of predicted effects of noncoding variants on chromatin accessibility and a method to identify noncoding variants with extreme regulatory effects, with application to disease variant discovery.

Journal

Nature Genetics cover
Nature Genetics
IF:
29
Papers:
692
Citations:
241

Organization

G
Gladstone Institutes
Scholars:
154
Papers: 32
Citations: 4.6K
S
stanford university
Scholars:
1.0W
Papers: 4.1K
Citations: 0