Substantial contribution of genetic variation in the expression of transcription factors to phenotypic variation revealed by eRD-GWAS

This study developed a Bayesian-based method for genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in which RNA-seq-based measures of transcript accumulation are used as explanatory variables (eRD-GWAS). The ability of eRD-GWAS to identify true associations between gene expression variation and phenotypic diversity is supported by analyses of RNA co- expression networks, protein–protein interaction networks, and gene regulatory networks in this study.

Genes associated with 13 traits were identified using eRD-GWAS on a panel of 369 maize inbred lines. Predicted functions of many of the resulting trait-associated genes are consistent with the analyzed traits. Overall eRD-GWAS is a powerful tool for associating genes with traits and is complementary to SNP-based GWAS. eRD-GWAS results are consistent with the hypothesis that genetic variation in transcription factor expression contributes substantially to phenotypic diversity.

https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-017-1328-6