Genetic effects of sequence-conserved enhancer-like elements on human complex traits

Abstract

Non-coding sequences that are evolutionarily conserved and bio-chemically active offer clues to mechanistic interpretations of human genome-wide association studies (GWAS). However, their genetic effects have not been systematically examined across a wide range of human tissues and traits. Here we develop a simple method to identify functional elements exhibiting high levels of human-mouse sequence conservation and enhancer-like biochemical activity, which scales well to 313 epigenomic datasets across 106 tissues and cell types. Combining these elements with 468 GWAS of European (EUR) and East Asian (EAS) ancestries, we identify tissue-specific enrichments of heritability and causal variants for many traits, as well as candidate genes that are functionally relevant to body mass index (BMI) and schizophrenia but were not reported in previous GWAS. Our findings provide a comprehensive assessment of how sequence-conserved enhancer-like elements affect complex traits, and reinforce the importance of integrating evolutionary and biochemical data to elucidate human disease genetics.