In total of 856 female twins (154 monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs, 232 dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs and 84 singletons) aged 38.7-84.6 years were recruited from the TwinsUK resource 17and adipose (subcutaneous fat) and skin tissue biopsies as well as peripheral blood samples (for generation of lymphoblastoid cell lines or LCLs) were collected for subsequent genome-wide expression profiling. The TwinsUK cohort has previously shown to be comparable to population singletons in terms of disease-related and lifestyle characteristics 18 . Cohort characteristics are presented in Supplementary Table 1.
