To uncover the genetic determinants affecting expression in a metabolically active tissue relevant to the study of obesity, diabetes, atherosclerosis, and other common human diseases, we profiled 427 human liver samples on a comprehensive gene expression microarray targeting greater than 40,000 transcripts and genotyped DNA from each of these samples at greater than 1,000,000 SNPs. The relatively large sample size of this study and the large number of SNPs genotyped provided the means to assess the relationship between genetic variants and gene expression and it provided this look for the first time in a non-blood derived, metabolically active tissue. A comprehensive analysis of the liver gene expression traits revealed that thousands of these traits are under the control of well defined genetic loci, with many of the genes having already been implicated in a number of human diseases.
Clincal data was requested, but not provided by submitter. Keywords: eQTL
Overall design
Liver samples (1-2 g) were acquired from Caucasian individuals from three independent liver collections at tissue resource centers at Vanderbilt University, University of Pittsburg, and Merck Research Laboratories. All individuals were compared to a common pool created from equal portions of RNA from 191 (111 from Vanderbilt University and 80 from University of Pittsburg) samples.
Less...
More...