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Variance Quantitative Trait Locus (varQTL)

Definition
AI-generated

A variance quantitative trait locus (varQTL or vQTL) is a genetic variant associated with variability of a molecular phenotype—such as gene expression heterogeneity across cells or individuals—rather than (or in addition to) its mean level.

Topics
Core genetics
Synonyms
vQTL
Related
Expression Quantitative Trait Locus (eQTL) Response eQTL Single-Cell Expression Quantitative Trait Locus (sc-eQTL)

Why it matters in GWAS

Single-cell data make cell-to-cell expression variance observable; genetic effects on noise or plasticity may relate to disease-relevant dynamic responses and can be missed by mean-only eQTL models.

Example usage

"The study reported a varQTL near the cytokine receptor that altered expression variance during T cell activation."

Expression Quantitative Trait Locus (eQTL) Response eQTL Single-Cell Expression Quantitative Trait Locus (sc-eQTL) Single-Cell Sequencing
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References

  • Sarkar AK, et al. (2019). Discovery and characterization of variance QTLs in human induced pluripotent stem cells. PLoS Genet.
  • Cuomo ASE, Nathan A, Raychaudhuri S, et al. (2023). Single-cell genomics meets human genetics. Nat Rev Genet. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-023-00599-5
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