A genome-wide association study identifies a locus on TERT for mean telomere length in Han Chinese.

• Main Authors: Yun Liu, Lan Cao, Zhiqiang Li, Daizhan Zhou, Wanqing Liu, Qin Shen, Yanting Wu, Dan Zhang, Xun Hu, Ting Wang, Junyi Ye, Xiaoling Weng, Hong Zhang, Di Zhang, Zhou Zhang, Fatao Liu, Lin He, Yongyong Shi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2014-01-01
• Series: PLoS ONE
• Online Access: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/24465473/pdf/?tool=EBI
• ISSN: 1932-6203

Leukocyte telomere length (LTL) is a predictor of aging and a number of age-related diseases. We performed genome-wide association studies of mean LTL in 2632 individuals,with a two-stage replication in 3917 individuals from Chinese populations. To further validate our findings, we get the results of 696 samples from a cohort of European ancestry. We identified two loci associated with LTL that map in telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT; rs2736100, P = 1.93×10(-5)) on chromosome 5p15.33 and near keratin 80 (KRT80; rs17653722, P = 6.96×10(-6)) on 12q13.13. In Chinese population each C allele of rs2736100 and T allele of rs17653722 was associated with a longer mean telomere length of 0.026 and 0.059 T/S, respectively, equivalent to about 3 and 7 years of average age-related telomere attrition. Our findings provide new insights into telomere regulatory mechanism and even pathogenesis of age-related diseases.