whether the DNA is accessible to transcription factors (i.e., the proteins responsible for transcribing DNA to RNA and determining gene expression levels) (Cockerill, 2011). Environmental exposures are known to affect epigenetic processes, and can further drive gene expression or repression via alterations to the availability of transcription factors (Meaney, 2010, Lopez-Maury et al., 2008). For these reasons, we hypothesized that allelic variation in DHS SNPs may be particularly impactful for responsiveness to environmental cues that alter gene expression (Liu et al., 2008).
