Meeshanthini V. Dogan, Jinhua Xiang, Steven R. H. Beach, Carolyn Cutrona, Frederick X. Gibbons, Ronald L. Simons, Gene H. Brody, Jack T. Stapleton, Robert A. Philibert
Abstract
Smoking is associated with poorer health outcomes for both African and European Americans. In order to better understand whether ethnic-specific genetic variation may underlie some of these differences, we compared the smoking-associated genome-wide methylation signatures of African Americans with those of European Americans, and followed up this analysis with a focused examination of the most ethnically divergent locus, cg19859270, at the GPR15 gene. We examined the association of methylation at this locus to the rs2230344 SNP and GPR15 gene and protein expression. Consistent with prior analyses, AHRR residue cg05575921 was the most differentially methylated residue in both African Americans and European Americans. However, the second most differentially methylated locus in African Americans, cg19859270, was only modestly differentially methylated in European Americans. Interrogation of the methylation status of this CpG residue found in GPR15, a chemokine receptor involved in HIV pathogenesis, showed a significant interaction of ethnicity with smoking as well as a marginal effect of genotype at rs2230344, a neighboring non-synonymous SNP, but only among African Americans. Gene and protein expression analyses showed that demethylation at cg19859270 was associated with an increase in both mRNA and protein levels. Since GPR15 is involved in the early stages of viral replication for some HIV-1 and HIV-2 isolates, and the prevalence of HIV is increased in African Americans and smokers, these data support a possible role for GPR15 in the ethnically dependent differential prevalence of HIV.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 22 September 2015.
All research outputs
#18,427,608
of 22,829,083 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in Psychiatry
#6,842
of 9,956 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#197,459
of 274,417 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in Psychiatry
#32
of 45 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,829,083 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 11th percentile – i.e., 11% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 9,956 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 10.4. This one is in the 22nd percentile – i.e., 22% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 274,417 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 16th percentile – i.e., 16% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 45 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 6th percentile – i.e., 6% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
