We found 453 associations between genotype and Z2E(j) with q-values < = 0.005 (Additional File 1 contains annotated associations) after 19,323,486 variance tests of 282 gene clusters and 68,523 SNPs. Note that a FDR q-value of 0.005 corresponded to an unadjusted p-value of approximately 1 × 10-7. Table 1 and Figure 3 highlight two of the most significant creQTLs that were within 5 MB of a protein-coding gene. As shown in Figure 3, for statistically significant creQTLs, the SNP genotypes exhibit varying contributions to the clusters. Moreover, samples that contribute most to a given cluster have more extreme, more tightly-clustered expression values; samples that contribute little to a given cluster have expression values (and contributions) closer to zero with greater variability. Additional File 2 shows the q-value density for associations as a function of gene cluster size. As can be seen in the figure, there was no relationship between q-values and gene cluster size.
