To comprehensively screen polymorphisms in the KCNJ6 gene, resequencing was performed using an ABI PRISM® 3100 Genetic Analyzer (Life Technologies Japan Ltd., Tokyo, Japan) for the human KCNJ6 (GIRK2) gene regions (mapped to 21q22.13–q22.2) and 5′-flanking region based on the nucleotide sequences of the GenBank database (accession number: NT_011512). The screened regions contained all consensus sequences of exon regions, exon-intron boundary regions (approximately 30 bp), and putative promoter regions (approximately 1.8 kbp) for the gene. The total length of the screened regions approximately amounted to 4.5 kbp (Figure 1). All primers used for the screening are shown in Table 2.
