Successes of Genome-wide Association Studies

In a recent Essay in Cell, McClellan and King argue that genomic resequencing rather than genome-wide association studies (GWAS) will be necessary to understand the genetic basis of common disease (McClellan and King, 2010). Like the authors, we too are excited about the potential for emerging sequencing technologies to facilitate discoveries that explain the missing heritability of common diseases. However, we disagree with the implication that GWAS have not been successful to date. Instead, we propose that insofar as the goal of these studies is to understand the etiology of heritable diseases, GWAS have provided numerous tantalizing clues for us biologists to decipher.