Figure 1

Resistin expression is regulated by rs34861192 and rs3219175. (a) Resistin eQTL in whole blood samples. The panel shows the location of eQTL-SNPs within in the resistin (RETN) gene locus. The position of common SNPs relative to the RETN gene is indicated on the x-axis (CpG-SNPs are in red); the -log10 (p value) indicated on the y-axis refers to their association with RETN-mRNA detected in 202 whole blood samples of our Singapore-Chinese cohort¹⁹. (b) rs3219175 genotype-associations. The levels of RETN mRNA isolated from whole blood cells (left panel), PBMC samples (right panel) of the Singapore-Chinese cohort were plotted against the genotypes of the RETN promoter SNP rs3219175. The mRNA expression displayed has been normalized and log2-transformed; p values were calculated using Mann-Whitney unpaired test. (c) Genotype-association in monocytes. The correlation with rs3219175 is shown for monocytes isolated from 21 individuals of Chinese ethnicity. The mRNA expression displayed on the y-axis represents the level of RETN mRNA expression in reference to GAPDH. (d) Reporter assay. The bar chart shows the result of a Luciferase reporter assay for the RETN promoter, in which the G-G and the A-A haplotype (rs34861192-rs3219175) were compared. The experiments were carried out in U937 cells, the promoter-driven firefly luminescence was normalized by renilla luminescence. The baseline signal (empty bar) was derived from a luciferase vector lacking the promoter fragment (PGL3-BASIC).