Fig. 1

An illustration of the regulation of tissue-specific gene regulation. In this example, we illustrate the concept of tissue-specific gene expression using Gene A (quantified by blue squiggly lines) and its genetic variant (denoted by red triangle labeled SNP) in two tissues, tissue 1 and tissue 2. In both tissues 1 and 2, left panel indicates the wild-type gene expression of Gene A and the right panel indicates a reduced gene expression in the presence of a genetic variant, shown here by the reduced number of blue squiggly lines. It is clear from the figure that there is a difference in baseline gene expression levels of Gene A in tissues 1 and 2 and there is a difference in the degree to which the gene expression is repressed by the genetic variant