DACE: Differential Allelic Co-Expression test for estimating regulatory associations of SNP and biological pathway

Abstract

To identify genomic regions associated with individual gene's expressions, genetical genomic approaches have been developed. The approach treats each gene expression value as a trait to determine the genetic factor that explains the variance of the mRNA expression. However, genes often demonstrate coordinated activities and the patterns and levels of coordination are also regulated. In this research, we present a method, the Differential Allelic Co-Expression (DACE) test that identifies the regulatory association derived by alteration of co-expression patterns within a molecular pathway according to allelic difference of a certain SNP.