CRISPRi-mediated functional analysis of lung disease-associated loci at non-coding regions

Genome-wide association studies have identified lung disease-associated loci; however, the functions of such loci are not well understood in part because the majority of such loci are located at non-coding regions. Hi-C, ChIP-seq and eQTL data predict potential roles (e.g. enhancer) of such loci; however, they do not elucidate the molecular function. To determine whether these loci function as gene-regulatory regions, CRISPR interference (CRISPRi; CRISPR/dCas9-KRAB) has been recently used. Here, we applied CRISPRi along with Hi-C, ChIP-seq and eQTL to determine the functional roles of loci established as highly associated with asthma, cystic fibrosis (CF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Notably, Hi-C, ChIP-seq and eQTL predicted that non-coding regions located at chromosome 19q13 or chromosome 17q21 harboring single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) linked to asthma/CF/COPD and chromosome 11p15 harboring an SNP linked to IPF interact with nearby genes and function as enhancers; however, CRISPRi indicated that the regions with rs1800469, rs2241712, rs12603332 and rs35705950, but not others, regulate the expression of nearby genes (single or multiple genes). These data indicate that CRISPRi is useful to precisely determine the roles of non-coding regions harboring lung disease-associated loci as to whether they function as gene-regulatory regions at a genomic level.