Transcriptome Sequencing from Diverse Human Populations Reveals Differentiated Regulatory Architecture

To understand the full range of expression variation, alternative splicing, and the genetics of regulatory variation in humans, we have sequenced the genomes, exomes, and transcriptomes of 45 individuals in the Human Genome Diversity Panel (HGDP) from seven worldwide populations that span the geographic breadth of human migration history. We find few genes that are systematically differentially expressed among populations. Further, allelic expression analysis indicates that previously mapped common regulatory variants identified in eight HapMap3 populations have similar effects across HGDP populations, suggesting that the cellular effects of common variants are shared even across very diverse populations. In contrast, comparisons of alternative splicing across pairwise populations reveal highly significant differences, with ~20% of alternatively spliced exons varying significantly by population. Greater genomic differences are associated with significantly more splicing variability overall. Together, these results provide a resource and an estimate for the degree of sharing of gene expression, alternative splicing, and regulatory genetics across populations. Lymphoblastoid cell line mRNA profiles of 45 human samples from the Human Genome Diversity Panel sequenced on an Illumina HiSeq 2000, each sample library was sequenced in duplicate to produce a merged sample bam.