Gene expression levels in African Americans vary with genetic ancestry at most expressed genes

Variation in gene expression is a fundamental aspect of human phenotypic variation. Several studies have analyzed gene expression levels in populations of different continental ancestry, and concluded that there is variation across populations at a fraction of expressed genes. Here we analyze gene expression levels in African American cell lines, which differ from previously analyzed cell lines in that samples from this population have variable proportions of continental ancestry. We show that for most genes examined, gene expression varies with genetic ancestry. Keywords: Human Gene Expression Study Lymphoblastoid cell lines (LCL) for 60 HapMap CEU, 60 HapMap YRI, and 82 AFA from the Human Variation Panel were obtained from Coriell Cell Repositories. LCLs were grown in culture, total RNA was extracted and hybridized to Affymetrix HG-FOCUS arrays.