Diverse short tandem repeat sequences influence gene regulation in human populations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Short tandem repeat (STR) length is a known determinant of pathogenicity in a variety of human disorders. The repeat sequence itself can modulate disease severity and penetrance; however, the broader impact of STR sequence variation on gene expression in the general population remains poorly understood. RESULTS: Here, we analyze the sequence composition of STRs across two general population cohorts of unrelated individuals (n = 3,150) and report that ~ 7% of STRs exhibit sequence variability, with distinct patterns observed among different ethnic groups. These variable repeats are more prone to expansion and are frequently found in proximity to Alu elements. Notably, STRs with variable motifs are often found near splice junctions of genes involved in brain and neuronal functions. This is supported by the differential expression of genes associated with neuron and cellular projection functions, driven by the presence of distinct STR sequences. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings underscore the previously unrecognized role of STR sequence variability in modulating gene expression and contributing to human phenotypic diversity.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".