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Cause and express

Nature Biotechnology volume 27, pages 544–545 (2009)Cite this article

Biological validation of a cadre of new obesity genes supports the power of studies that exploit 'expression quantitative trait loci'.

The biological basis of complex traits such as obesity has long been sought among the varying genotypes of individuals. In a new twist on classical genetic mapping, geneticists have begun to use microarrays to link genomic regions to mRNA abundance1 and then to candidate genes responsible for complex traits or diseases2. Reporting in Nature Genetics, Drake and colleagues3 have carried out validation studies of genes previously implicated in obesity through analysis of genomic loci that influence gene expression levels—often called expression quantitative trait loci, or eQTLs. Their results support the utility of these new genetic methods.

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Figure 1: Expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) are useful in understanding the molecular basis of complex diseases.

Katie Vicari

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Princeton, Leonid Kruglyak is at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, New Jersey, USA.,

    Leonid Kruglyak

  2. John D. Storey is at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and the Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA. leonid@genomics.princeton.edu or jstorey@princeton.edu,

    John D Storey

Authors
  1. Leonid Kruglyak
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  2. John D Storey
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Kruglyak, L., Storey, J. Cause and express. Nat Biotechnol 27, 544–545 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0609-544

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