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Deep learning predicts DNA methylation regulatory variants in specific brain cell types and enhances fine mapping for brain disorders

Zhou, J.; Weinberger, D.; Han, S.

2024-01-21 genetics
10.1101/2024.01.18.576319 bioRxiv
Show abstract

DNA methylation (DNAm) is essential for brain development and function and potentially mediates the effects of genetic risk variants underlying brain disorders. We present INTERACT, a transformer-based deep learning model to predict regulatory variants impacting DNAm levels in specific brain cell types, leveraging existing single-nucleus DNAm data from the human brain. We show that INTERACT accurately predicts cell type-specific DNAm profiles, achieving an average area under the Receiver Operating Characteristic curve of 0.98 across cell types. Furthermore, INTERACT predicts cell type-specific DNAm regulatory variants, which reflect cellular context and enrich the heritability of brain-related traits in relevant cell types. Importantly, we demonstrate that incorporating predicted variant effects and DNAm levels of CpG sites enhances the fine mapping for three brain disorders--schizophrenia, depression, and Alzheimers disease--and facilitates mapping causal genes to particular cell types. Our study highlights the power of deep learning in identifying cell type-specific regulatory variants, which will enhance our understanding of the genetics of complex traits. TeaserDeep learning reveals genetic variations impacting brain cell type-specific DNA methylation and illuminates genetic bases of brain disorders

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