as well as rs56137030, was substantially reduced, supporting the idea that any of the highly correlated SNPs is a potential functional candidate. rs56137030 and all 28 highly correlated SNPs are non-coding, suggesting that the functional variant is likely to have a cis-regulatory effect. Among these variants, six are located within the candidate intronic regulatory elements, two of which are highly conserved, and two that are predicted to confer allele-specific binding affinities for transcription factors. The variant rs1421085 is within a highly conserved element and may be particularly interesting, because the C allele has a substantially reduced binding affinity for CUX1, which has been previously implicated in the transcriptional regulation of FTO [34]. Accordingly, this variant is a compelling candidate for follow-up functional evaluation, though outside the scope of the present study.
