veqtl-mapper: variance association mapping for molecular phenotypes.

Abstract

Genetic loci associated with the variance of phenotypic traits have been of recent interest as they can be signatures of genetic interactions, gene by environment interactions, parent of origin effects and canalization. We present a fast efficient tool to map loci affecting variance of gene expression and other molecular phenotypes in cis. Results: Applied to the publicly available Geuvadis gene expression dataset, we identify 816 loci associated with variance of gene expression using an additive model, and 32 showing differences in variance between homozygous and heterozygous alleles, signatures of parent of origin effects. Documentation and links to source code and binaries for linux can be found at https://funpopgen.github.io/veqm/ . andrew.brown@unige.ch. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.