Integration of Alzheimer’s GWAS, 3D genomics, and single-cell CRISPRi non-coding screen implicates causal variants in a microglial enhancer regulating TSPAN14. [RNA-Seq]

While GWAS have been successful in providing variant-to-trait associations for human complex diseases, functional dissection of the discovered loci has lagged behind. Here, we describe a variant-to-gene (V2G) mapping effort for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) to implicate causal variants and effector genes from the most recent AD GWAS meta-analyses (101 loci). We leveraged our genomics datasets comprising high-resolution promoter Capture C, ATAC-seq, and RNA-seq from brain-relevant cell types to fine-map AD GWAS variants, identifying 89 candidate causal SNPs and 69 effector genes. We then designed a single-cell CRISPRi screen to perturb candidate regulatory regions (n=74) and assess the transcriptional response in the human microglial cell line, HMC3. Our screen across ~97,000 cells identified 19 regulatory regions and 19 effector genes. We then elected to functionally dissect our top hit, the TSPAN14 locus, and we show that an intronic region containing AD-associated SNPs rs7080009, rs1870138, and rs1870137 is a microglia-specific enhancer, with the AD risk haplotype increasing its activity. CRISPR precise genomic deletion of this region decreases TSPAN14 expression, alters specific cellular pathways including cell adhesion, and decreases secreted levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-6 and IL-8, which are known biomarkers of aging and AD. Our work provides a systematic framework to map GWAS signals to their effector genes for AD and other brain-related disorders, and provides robust leads to follow up with in-depth functional investigations.