OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
If staff have any questions about the Oxford Events launch, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Celiac disease (CeD) is a complex T cell–mediated enteropathy induced by gluten. Although genome-wide association studies have identified numerous genomic regions associated with CeD, it is difficult to accurately pinpoint which genes in these loci are most likely to cause CeD. We used four different in silico approaches to integrate information gathered from a large transcriptomics dataset. This identified 118 prioritized genes across 50 CeD-associated regions. Co-expression and pathway analysis of these genes indicated an association with adaptive and innate cytokine signalling and T cell activation pathways. 51 of these genes are targets of known drug compounds, suggesting that our methods can be used to pinpoint potential therapeutic targets. In addition, we detected 129 gene-combinations that were affected by our CeD-prioritized genes in trans. Notably, 40 of these trans-mediated genes appear to be under control of one master regulator, TRAFD1, and were found to be involved in IFN signalling and MHC I antigen processing/presentation. We then performed in vitro experiments that validated the role of TRAFD1 as an immune regulator acting in trans. Our strategy has confirmed the role of adaptive immunity in CeD and revealed a genetic link between CeD and the IFNsignalling and MHC I antigen processing pathways, both major players of immune activation and CeD pathogenesis. Our next steps will be to test the role of TRAFD1 in a novel, human model system of the intestinal barrier, the gut-on-chip.