Massively Parallel Reporter Assay Confirms Regulatory Potential of hQTLs and Reveals Important Variants in Lupus and Other Autoimmune Diseases

We designed a massively parallel reporter assay (MPRA) in an Epstein-Barr virus transformed B cell line to directly characterize the potential for histone post-translational modifications, i.e., histone quantitative trait loci (hQTLs), expression QTLs (eQTLs), and variants on SLE and autoimmune (AI) disease risk haplotypes to modulate regulatory activity in an allele dependent manner. Our study demonstrates that hQTLs, as a group, are more likely to modulate regulatory activity in an MPRA compared to other variant classes tested, including a set of eQTLs previously shown to interact with hQTLs and tested AI risk variants. In addition, we nominate 17 variants (including 11 previously unreported) as putative causal variants for SLE and another 14 for various other AI diseases, prioritizing these variants for future functional studies in primary and immortalized B cells. Thus, we uncover important insights into the mechanistic relationships between genotype, epigenetics, and gene expression in SLE and AI disease phenotypes.