The algorithm for the selection of new candidate SNPs and full SNP description are presented in the Supplementary Material. Briefly, we concentrated on the SNPs with relatively high minor allele frequencies that are situated within potentially functional sites relative to known constitutive and predicted alternative exons (Table 2). Genomic DNA was purified using QIAampTM 96 DNA Blood Kit (Qiagen, Valencia, CA, USA). The primers and probes for genotyping were from Applied Biosystems (ABI, Foster City, CA, USA) (Supplementary Material, Table S1). The genotyping error rate was directly determined and was <0.005. Genotype completion rate was 95%.
