‘Big data’ revolution gives new insight into how diseases develop

Systematic identification of trans eQTLs as putative drivers of known disease associations

Harm-Jan Westra, ... Alexandra Zhernakova, Daria V Zhernakova, ... Juha Karjalainen, Sebo Withoff, ... Yang Li, Ritsert C Jansen, ... Lude Franke
Dept of Genetics, UMCG, Groningen

Published in Nature Genetics online: 08 September 2013 | doi:10.1038/ng.2756

Lude Franke and colleagues report the results of a large expression QTL study performed on peripheral blood samples from 5,311 individuals. They identify trans-eQTL effects for 103 independent loci that were previously associated with complex traits at genome-wide significance, suggesting that this approach can provide insights into the downstream effects of many trait-associated variants.

Link to full text of paper

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