The GTEx Project of the NIH Common Fund aims to establish a resource database and associated tissue bank in which to study the relationship between genetic variation and gene expression, and other molecular phenotypes, in multiple reference tissues (Supplementary Figure 1). The GTEx project began with a 2.5-year pilot phase to test the feasibility of establishing a rapid autopsy program that would yield high-quality nucleic acids and robust gene expression measurements. Having met milestones of donor enrollment, RNA quality, and eQTL findings, the project is scaling up to include approximately 900 post-mortem donors by the end of 2015. The power to detect eQTLs is dependent on multiple factors that are difficult to quantify precisely, but values over a range of effect sizes and allele frequencies are described in Figure 1.
