Integrative genomics approach identifies glial transcriptomic dysregulation and risk in the cortex of individuals with Alcohol Use Disorder.

Abstract

Background: Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a prevalent neuropsychiatric disorder that is a major global health concern, affecting millions of people worldwide. Past studies of AUD used underpowered single cell analysis or bulk homogenates of postmortem brain tissue, which obscures gene expression changes in specific cell types. Therefore, we sought to conduct the largest-to-date single-nuclei RNAseq (snRNA-seq) postmortem brain study in AUD to elucidate transcriptomic pathology with cell type-specific resolution.

Methods: Here we performed snRNA-seq and high dimensional network analysis of 73 post-mortem samples from individuals with AUD (N=36, N_nuclei= 248,873) and neurotypical controls (N=37, N_nuclei= 210,573) in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex from both male and female donors. Additionally, we performed analysis for cell type-specific enrichment of aggregate genetic risk for AUD as well as integration of the AUD proteome for secondary validation.

Results: We identified 32 distinct cell clusters and found widespread cell type-specific transcriptomic changes across the cortex in AUD, particularly affecting glial populations. We found the greatest dysregulation in novel microglial and astrocytic subtypes that accounted for the majority of differential gene expression and co-expression modules linked to AUD. Differential gene expression was secondarily validated by integration of a publicly available AUD proteome. Finally, analysis for aggregate genetic risk for AUD identified subtypes of glia as potential key players not only affected by but causally linked to the progression of AUD.

Conclusions: These results highlight the importance of cell type-specific molecular changes in AUD and offer opportunities to identify novel targets for treatment on the single-nuclei level.