Large-Scale trans-eQTLs Affect Hundreds of Transcripts and Mediate Patterns of Transcriptional Co-regulation.

ABSTRACT: Efforts to decipher the causal relationships between differences in gene regulation and corresponding differences in phenotype have been stymied by several basic technical challenges. Although detecting local, cis-eQTLs is now routine, trans-eQTLs, which are distant from the genes of origin, are far more difficult to find because millions of SNPs must currently be compared to thousands of transcripts. Here, we demonstrate an alternative approach: we looked for SNPs associated with the expression of many genes simultaneously and found that hundreds of trans-eQTLs each affect hundreds of transcripts in lymphoblastoid cell lines across three African populations. These trans-eQTLs target the same genes across the three populations and show the same direction of effect. We discovered that targe

SUBMITTER: Brynedal B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5384037 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature