To determine whether genes within the WHR-associated loci showed evidence of differential transcription in distinct fat-depots, we compared expression levels in gluteal or abdominal SAT in 49 individuals. We focused on the 15 genes with the strongest credentials for causal involvement (on the basis of proximity to the lead SNP and/or other biological or functional data: Table 1) for which expression data were available. Five of these (RSPO3, TBX15, ITPR2, WARS2 and STAB1) were differentially expressed between the two tissues (F-test, corrected for false discovery rate across the 15 expressed genes, P < 0.05; Supplementary Table 7). This supported the hypothesis that, at some loci at least, the association with WHR reflects depot-specific differences in expression patterns.
