Co-occurring expression and methylation QTLs allow detection of common causal variants and shared biological mechanisms

Abstract

Most expression QTLs (eQTLs) co-occur with a DNA methylation QTL (meQTL), suggesting a common causal variant. Here the authors analyse DNA and RNA from blood and identify eQTL-meQTL pairs likely to share a causal variant, finding that expression and methylation are often genetically co-regulated.