@article {476, title = {Genetic insights into biological mechanisms governing human ovarian ageing}, journal = {Nature}, volume = {596}, year = {2021}, pages = {393{\textendash}397}, abstract = {

Reproductive longevity is essential for fertility and influences healthy ageing in women1,2, but insights into its underlying biological mechanisms and treatments to preserve it are limited. Here we identify 290 genetic determinants of ovarian ageing, assessed using normal variation in age at natural menopause (ANM) in about 200,000 women of European ancestry. These common alleles were associated with clinical extremes of ANM; women in the top 1\% of genetic susceptibility have an equivalent risk of premature ovarian insufficiency to those carrying monogenic FMR1 premutations3. The identified loci implicate a broad range of DNA damage response (DDR) processes and include loss-of-function variants in key DDR-associated genes. Integration with experimental models demonstrates that these DDR processes act across the life-course to shape the ovarian reserve and its rate of depletion. Furthermore, we demonstrate that experimental manipulation of DDR pathways highlighted by human genetics increases fertility and extends reproductive life in mice. Causal inference analyses using the identified genetic variants indicate that extending reproductive life in women improves bone health and reduces risk of type 2 diabetes, but increases the risk of hormone-sensitive cancers. These findings provide insight into the mechanisms that govern ovarian ageing, when they act, and how they might be targeted by therapeutic approaches to extend fertility and prevent disease.

}, doi = {10.1038/s41586-021-03779-7}, author = {Ruth, Katherine S and Day, Felix R and Hussain, Jazib and Mart{\'\i}nez-Marchal, Ana and Aiken, Catherine E and Azad, Ajuna and +100Authors} } @article {475, title = {The trans-ancestral genomic architecture of glycemic traits}, journal = {Nature Genetics}, year = {2021}, month = {05/2021}, pages = {840{\textendash}860}, abstract = {

Glycemic traits are used to diagnose and monitor type 2 diabetes and cardiometabolic health. To date, most genetic studies of glycemic traits have focused on individuals of European ancestry. Here we aggregated genome-wide association studies comprising up to 281,416 individuals without diabetes (30\% non-European ancestry) for whom fasting glucose, 2-h glucose after an oral glucose challenge, glycated hemoglobin and fasting insulin data were available. Trans-ancestry and single-ancestry meta-analyses identified 242\ loci (99 novel; P\ \<\ 5\ \×\ 10\−8), 80\% of which had no significant evidence of between-ancestry heterogeneity. Analyses restricted to individuals of European ancestry with equivalent sample size would have led to 24 fewer new loci. Compared with single-ancestry analyses, equivalent-sized trans-ancestry fine-mapping reduced the number of estimated variants in 99\% credible sets by a median of 37.5\%. Genomic-feature, gene-expression and gene-set analyses revealed distinct biological signatures for each trait, highlighting different underlying biological pathways. Our results increase our understanding of diabetes pathophysiology by using trans-ancestry studies for improved power and resolution.

}, doi = {10.1038/s41588-021-00852-9}, author = {Chen, Ji and Spracklen, Cassandra N and Marenne, Ga{\"e}lle and Varshney, Arushi and Corbin, Laura J and Luan, Jian{\textquoteright}an and Willems, Sara M and Wu, Ying and Zhang, Xiaoshuai and Horikoshi, Momoko and Boutin, Thibaud S and M{\"a}gi, Reedik and Waage, Johannes and +100Authors} }