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Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified many variants associated with complex traits, but identifying the causal gene(s) is a major challenge. In the present study, we present an open resource that provides systematic fine mapping and gene prioritization across 133,441 published human GWAS loci. We integrate genetics (GWAS Catalog and UK Biobank) with transcriptomic, proteomic and epigenomic data, including systematic disease-disease and disease-molecular trait colocalization results across 92 cell types and tissues. We identify 729 loci fine mapped to a single-coding causal variant and colocalized with a single gene. We trained a machine-learning model using the fine-mapped genetics and functional genomics data and 445 gold-standard curated GWAS loci to distinguish causal genes from neighboring genes, outperforming a naive distance-based model. Our prioritized genes were enriched for known approved drug targets (odds ratio = 8.1, 95% confidence interval = 5.7, 11.5). These results are publicly available through a web portal ( http://genetics.opentargets.org ), enabling users to easily prioritize genes at disease-associated loci and assess their potential as drug targets.

Original publication

DOI

10.1038/s41588-021-00945-5

Type

Journal article

Journal

Nature genetics

Publication Date

11/2021

Volume

53

Pages

1527 - 1533

Addresses

Wellcome Sanger Institute, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, UK.

Keywords

Humans, Chromosome Mapping, Genomics, Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide, Quantitative Trait Loci, Models, Genetic, Genome-Wide Association Study, Epigenomics, Machine Learning