All genes within 500 kb of an index SNP were annotated for molecular function, cellular function, and for evidence of association with BMI-related traits in human or animal model experiments (Supplementary Table 22). We used several avenues for annotation, including Spotter (http://csg.sph.umich.edu/boehnke/spotter/), SNIPPER (http://csg.sph.umich.edu/boehnke/snipper/), PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/), OMIM (http:/www.omim.org) and UNIPROT (http://www.uniprot.org/). When no genes mapped to this interval the nearest gene on each side of the index SNP was annotated. In examining possible functions of genes in the region, we excluded any references to GWAS or other genetic association studies. We analysed 405 genes in the 97 GWS loci and manually curated them into 25 biological categories containing more than three genes.
