Mouse tissue was provided to Celera by the Jackson Laboratory of Bar Harbor, Me., a leading mouse colony.
Here we examined a greater number of tissue eQTLs and GWAS results.
In this study, we demonstrate a novel approach integrating eQTLs and mouse tissue-specific coexpression networks with knowledge of genetic variants reproducibly associated with type 2 diabetes.
We analyzed all eQTLs in single sex cohorts, as sex has been shown be markedly affect gene expression and eQTLs in various mouse tissues [12], [13], and this strategy proved particularly important for trans eQTLs which were overwhelmingly sex-specific.
Similarly, ASE magnitude of effect correlated negatively with evolutionary constraint (rho = −0.10, p = 9 × 10−8, n = 2612), whereas cis-eQTL in adult mouse tissues showed no correlation (|rho| < 0.05).
eQTL analysis was applied to mouse tissues from an F2 cohort derived from a strain intercross yielding thousands of eQTLs, which were distributed non-randomly over the genome yielding hotspots that each contained hundreds of eQTLs [2].
Both of these alternative analyses support the original conclusion that adult mouse tissues show a substantially higher proportion of trans-eQTL than do embryos.
To distinguish these possibilities, we obtained genotype and expression data from previously published eQTL studies performed in adult mouse tissues (Wang et al., 2006; Yang et al., 2006; Chen et al., 2008).
Since gene expression in somatic mouse tissues is highly sex specific [12], [13], we analyzed eQTLs separately in males and females.
The synthesis of available tissue eQTL data highlights many strong cis-eQTLs that may have important biologic roles and could serve as positive controls in future studies.
