ObjectivesGenome-wide association studies (GWASs) have revealed many SNPs and genes associated with osteoporosis. However, influence of these SNPs and genes on the predisposition to osteoporosis is not fully understood. We aimed to identify osteoporosis GWASs-associated SNPs potentially influencing the binding affinity of transcription factors and miRNAs, and reveal enrichment signaling pathway and “hub” genes of osteoporosis GWAS-associated genes.MethodsWe conducted multiple computational analyses to explore function and mechanisms of osteoporosis GWAS-associated SNPs and genes, including SNP conservation analysis and functional annotation (influence of SNPs on transcription factors and miRNA binding), gene ontology analysis, pathway analysis and protein-protein interaction analysis.ResultsOur results suggested that a number of SNPs potentially influence the binding affinity of transcription factors (NFATC2, MEF2C, SOX9, RUNX2, ESR2, FOXA1 and STAT3) and miRNAs. Osteoporosis GWASs-associated genes showed enrichment of Wnt signaling pathway, basal cell carcinoma and Hedgehog signaling pathway. Highly interconnected “hub” genes revealed by interaction network analysis are RUNX2, SP7, TNFRSF11B, LRP5, DKK1, ESR1 and SOST.ConclusionsOur results provided the targets for further experimental assessment and further insight on osteoporosis pathophysiology.
The 5′ untranslated region (5′UTR) plays a key role in post-transcriptional regulation, but interaction between nucleotides and directed evolution of 5′UTRs as synthetic regulatory elements remain unclear. By constructing a library of synthesized random 5′UTRs of 24 nucleotides in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we observed strong epistatic interactions among bases from different positions in the 5′UTR. Taking into account these base interactions, we constructed a mathematical model to predict protein abundance with a precision of R 2 = 0.60. On the basis of this model, we developed an approach to engineer 5′UTRs according to nucleotide sequence activity relationships (NuSAR), in which 5′UTRs were engineered stepwise through repeated cycles of backbone design, directed screening, and model reconstruction. After three rounds of NuSAR, the predictive accuracy of our model was improved to R 2 = 0.71, and a strong 5′UTR was obtained with 5-fold higher protein abundance than the starting 5′UTR. Our findings provide new insights into the mechanism of 5′UTR regulation and contribute to a new translational elements engineering approach in synthetic biology.
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