Because these genes were differentially regulated in response to OM in the infected wildtype mouse ME, the results of this DE analysis suggest that the FUT2 c.461G>A variant magnifies the downstream response to infection (for example, downregulated MUC16, upregulated MTAP), and/or reverses the direction of regulation (e.g. downregulation of FN1 in carriers of the FUT2 variant; Figures 2, 4 and Table 4). Here, MTAP is linked to infection.