have collected both genome-wide genotype, expression and phenotype data from the same individuals will permit answering the question what the extent of this phenotypic buffering is. We should emphasize that the number of converging pairs of SNPs that we identified must be a very strong underestimate, and as such the false-negative rate from this analysis is likely to be high: As we observed that on average 40.4% of the trait-associated SNPs affect gene expression levels in cis, we expect that many of these SNPs will exert effects on gene expression in trans. However, these effects are likely to be small and due to multiple testing issues our current study identified only a relatively small set of trans-eQTL effects. Likewise the number of detected converging pairs of SNPs is even smaller. However, as we observed this convergence for various pairs of SNPs, future genetical genomics studies using larger sample sizes will likely reveal many more pairs of converging SNPs, providing better insight in the downstream molecular mechanisms that are affected by these disorders.
