Fig. 2

Genetic and epigenetic influences on inter-individual transcriptional differentiation. a The two histograms show the percent variation among individuals for the 1,000 transcripts that had the highest documented cis-eQTL effects (Strong) and 1,000 with only weak cis-eQTL (Weak). The highly significant shift in the distribution to higher R-squared values in the strong set is consistent with cis-eQTL contributing at least a portion of the inter-individual variability. b Density contours of the regression of the among-individual R-squared for transcript abundance on the among-individual R-squared for all CpG annotated to the vicinity of the same gene (within 1.5 kb of the transcription start site or in an exon). The methylation R-squared for the vast majority of CpG was less than the transcript R-squared. c Density contours and individual gene points for the same regression as in (b), but only with the peak CpG per gene, namely the site with the largest variance among individuals. Black points have residuals of at least 0.3 beta units