To conclude, we report the first systematic analysis of genetically-mediated DNA methylation in the developing human brain. Our data support the hypothesis that a significant proportion of the genetic variants conferring schizophrenia risk have regulatory effects that become manifest early in the prenatal period, and demonstrate the utility of mQTL mapping for localizing putative causal loci associated with complex disease phenotypes within large genomic regions. As a resource to the wider community, we have developed a searchable online database of fetal brain mQTLs that can be accessed at http://epigenetics.essex.ac.uk/mQTL/.
