Uncovering context-specific genetic-regulation of gene expression from single-cell RNA-sequencing using latent-factor models

Genetic regulation of gene expression is a complex process, with genetic effects known to vary across cellular contexts such as cell types and environmental conditions. We developed SURGE, a method for unsupervised discovery of context-specific expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) from single-cell transcriptomic data. This allows discovery of the contexts or cell types modulating genetic regulation without prior knowledge. Applied to peripheral blood single-cell eQTL data, SURGE contexts capture continuous representations of distinct cell types and groupings of biologically related cell types. We demonstrate the disease-relevance of SURGE context-specific eQTLs using colocalization analysis and stratified LD-score regression.