Downloaded from genome.cshlp.org on October 6, 2021 - Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press Defining cell-type specificity at the transcriptional level in human disease Wenjun Ju1,2#, Casey S. Greene3,4,5#, Felix Eichinger1, Viji Nair1, Jeffery B. Hodgin1, Markus Bitzer1, Young-suk Lee3,4, Qian Zhu3,4, Masami Kehata6, Min Li6, Song Jiang1, Maria Pia Rastaldi6, Clemens D. Cohen7, Olga G. Troyanskaya3,4*, and Matthias Kretzler1,2* 1Division of Nephrology, Department of Internal Medicine, 2Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48105, USA. 3Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA. 4Department of Computer Science, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 08540, USA. 5Department of Genetics, The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, NH, 03755, USA. 6Laboratorio di Ricerca Nefrologica, Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, Milano, Italy. 7Division of Nephrology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. #These authors contributed equally to the work *To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email:
[email protected] (M.K.);
[email protected] (O.G.T.) 1 Downloaded from genome.cshlp.org on October 6, 2021 - Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press Abstract Cell-lineage-specific transcripts, i.e. those with expression restricted to a limited set of cell types, are essential for differentiated tissue function, mediate acquired chronic diseases, and are implicated in hereditary organ failure. However, experimental identification of cell-lineage specific genes in a genome-scale manner is infeasible for most solid human tissues. To address this challenge, we developed the first genome-scale computational method to identify genes with cell-lineage-specific expression, even in lineages not separable by experimental micro- dissection.