Deep transcriptomic analysis of human vascular cells identifies novel risk genes for common vascular diseases. Deep transcriptomic analysis of human vascular cells identifies novel risk genes for common vascular diseases

Several genome-wide association studies have to date been carried out to identify genetic risk loci associated with vascular diseases. Many of the established common variants likely perturb the expression of disease-relevant genes within the vascular tissue itself. To identify such genes on a genome-wide level, we analyzed the transcriptome of human coronary artery smooth muscle and endothelial cells for Allele-Specific Expression (ASE). Overall design: observation of mRNA expression in 2 different cell types from paired donor samples