Table S2 shows the names and properties of the 107 genes whose expression levels in whole blood were affected by SNPs. The SNPs affecting expression levels of the same gene were primarily in high LD with each other. Furthermore, investigation of combined Chinese and Japanese (CHB+JPT) panels from the 1000 Genomes Pilot 1 SNP data set and the HapMap release 22 data set showed a greater number of SNPs in high LD (r2>0.8) with the eQTL SNPs identified in the current study. Since the high intermarker correlations cause difficulties in determining which SNP is responsible for the regulation of gene expression, we defined the eQTL region of a gene as the genomic range in which the SNPs in LD (r2>0.8) with the eQTL SNPs of the gene are located. LD was determined by SNAP [20] using the population panel CHB+JPT from the 1000 Genomes Pilot 1 SNP data set and the HapMap release 22 data set.
