In the first polymorphism search in the whole exon, 5′-flanking, and exon-intron boundary regions of the KCNJ6 gene, a total of nine SNPs were identified in the 5′-flanking region, intron 1, exon 3, and exon 4. Figure 1 illustrates the relative positions of the SNPs identified in the KCNJ6 gene. The characteristics of the SNPs are provided in Table 3, where the minor allele frequencies of the SNPs are also shown. The allele frequencies of the SNPs observed in this study were comparable (less than 0.1 difference) to those annotated in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database (Table 3). SNPs for a further association study were selected, considering the LD structure, minor allele frequencies of the SNPs, and the expected impact on gene function. The results of the D' and r2 calculations for the KCNJ6 gene are provided in Table 4. Absolute LD (D' = 1, r2 = 1) was observed between SNPs G-1250A, T-244C, and C-227T (Table 4), and Haploview also identified G-1250A as a candidate haplotype-tagging SNP in this LD block structure. The minor allele frequencies
