Published today in Gene Regulation and Systems Biology is a new original research article by Thomas M. Blomquist, Ronald D. Brown, Erin L. Crawford, Ivana de la Serna, Kandace Williams, Youngsook Yoon, Dawn-Alita Hernandez and James C. Willey.  Read more about this paper below:

Title

CEBPG Exhibits Allele-Specific Expression in Human Bronchial Epithelial Cells

Abstract

Inter-individual variation in CCAAT/enhancer binding protein gamma (CEBPG) transcript expression in normal human bronchial epithelial cells (NBEC) is associated with predisposition to lung cancer. We hypothesize that this inter-individual variation is in part explained by cis-acting genetic variation in CEBPG. To test this hypothesis we measured transcript expression derived from each parental copy of CEBPG (ie, allele-specific expression; ASE). There was a significant 2.9-fold higher cell cycle-specific variation in ASE of CEBPG rs2772 A compared to C allele (P < 0.001). In 20% of NBEC samples, CEBPG rs2772 A allele was expressed on average 2.10 fold greater than rs2772 C allele. These data support the hypothesis that genetic variation in linkage disequilibrium with rs2772 influences regulation of CEBPG transcript expression through a trans-effect downstream of RNA polymerase II transcription and confirm that cis-acting genetic variation contributes to inter-individual variation in CEBPG transcript expression in NBEC, which is associated with variation in lung cancer risk.

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