The impact of proinflammatory cytokines on the β-cell regulatory landscape provides insights into the genetics of type 1 diabetes

The early stages of type 1 diabetes (T1D) are characterized by local autoimmune inflammation and progressive loss of insulin-producing pancreatic beta cells. Here we show that exposure to proinflammatory cytokines reveals a marked plasticity of the beta-cell regulatory landscape. We expand the repertoire of human islet regulatory elements by mapping stimulus-responsive enhancers linked to changes in the beta-cell transcriptome, proteome and three-dimensional chromatin structure. Our data indicate that the beta-cell response to cytokines is mediated by the induction of new regulatory regions as well as the activation of primed regulatory elements prebound by islet-specific transcription factors. We find that T1D-associated loci are enriched with newly mapped cis-regulatory regions and identify T1D-associated variants disrupting cytokine-responsive enhancer activity in human beta cells. Our study illustrates how beta cells respond to a proinflammatory environment and implicate a role for stimulus response islet enhancers in T1D.