relatively poor conservation in cis-eQTLs between cell lines and brain tissue samples, but it should not significantly increase the false positive rates. In the present study, (1) we detected positive cis-eQTL signals in lymphoblastoid cell lines across multiple populations, (2) these markers were alcoholism-associated, and (3) the distributions of these cis-eQTL signals matched the distribution of the alcoholism-gene association signals. We believed that these findings might be highly likely to be truly positive, and strongly suggested that these markers might have positive cis-eQTL signals in the brain too. Independent validation of the cis-eQTL analysis in the brain tissues is warranted in the follow-up study to test our hypothesis.
