To illustrate mash in a substantive application, we analyzed eQTLs across 44 human tissues, using data from the Genotype Tissue Expression (GTEx) project17. The GTEx project aims to provide insights into the mechanisms of gene regulation by studying gene expression and regulation in multiple tissues from human donors. One fundamental question is which SNPs are eQTLs (i.e., associated with gene expression) in which tissues. Answering this could help distinguish regulatory mechanisms that are tissue-specific or shared, and, by integrating with results from genome-wide association studies (GWAS), could help identify the most relevant tissues for complex disease17,18.
