Results (
Thai) 2:
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Genetical genomics is a strategy for mapping gene expression variation to expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs). We
performed a genetical genomics experiment in four functionally distinct but developmentally closely related hematopoietic
cell populations isolated from the BXD panel of recombinant inbred mouse strains. This analysis allowed us to analyze eQTL
robustness/sensitivity across different cellular differentiation states. Although we identified a large number (365) of ‘‘static’’
eQTLs that were consistently active in all four cell types, we found a much larger number (1,283) of ‘‘dynamic’’ eQTLs
showing cell-type–dependence. Of these, 140, 45, 531, and 295 were preferentially active in stem, progenitor, erythroid, and
myeloid cells, respectively. A detailed investigation of those dynamic eQTLs showed that in many cases the eQTL specificity
was associated with expression changes in the target gene. We found no evidence for target genes that were regulated by
distinct eQTLs in different cell types, suggesting that large-scale changes within functional regulatory networks are
uncommon. Our results demonstrate that heritable differences in gene expression are highly sensitive to the developmental
stage of the cell population under study. Therefore, future genetical genomics studies should aim at studying multiple welldefined
and highly purified cell types in order to construct as comprehensive a picture of the changing functional
regulatory relationships as possible.
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