To confirm the accuracy of the exon array technology, and in particular the conclusion of tissue specificity, we selected a subset of sQTLs to evaluate with quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). Events were selected to replicate the detected event as closely as possible, and also to establish that tissue specificity was not the result of low resolution of the array when exons are differentially expressed in a tissue type. We found a highly significant correlation between measurements using both technologies (Figure 3) with an overall associated p-value comparing the two methodologies (linear regression) of 1 × 10−35. Importantly, we found clear replication of tissue specificity.
