Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are an established cellular system to study the impact of genetic variants in derived cell types and developmental contexts. However, in their pluripotent state, the disease impact of genetic variants is less well known. Here, we integrate data from 1,367 human iPSC lines to comprehensively map common and rare regulatory variants in human pluripotent cells. Using this population-scale resource, we report hundreds of new colocalization events for human traits specific to iPSCs, and find increased power to identify rare regulatory variants compared with somatic tissues. Finally, we demonstrate how iPSCs enable the identification of causal genes for rare diseases.
FörderungenNIH Common Fund, through the Office of Strategic Coordination/Office of the NIH Director Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project National Key R&D Program of China National Natural Science Foundation of China Stanford Graduate Fellowship National Institutes of Health (NIH) EMBL UK Medical Research Council EBI-Sanger Postdoctoral Fellowship National Science Foundation NIH European Union (ERC) Volkswagen Foundation BMBF California Institute for Regenerative Medicine Wellcome Trust