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You've Gotta Be Lucky: Coverage and the Elusive Gene–Gene Interaction
Author(s) -
Reimherr Matthew,
Nicolae Dan L.
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
annals of human genetics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.537
H-Index - 77
eISSN - 1469-1809
pISSN - 0003-4800
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-1809.2010.00615.x
Subject(s) - linkage disequilibrium , genome wide association study , single nucleotide polymorphism , genetic association , genetics , snp , biology , sample size determination , linkage (software) , gene , computational biology , statistics , mathematics , genotype
Summary Genome‐wide association studies (GWAS) have led to a large number of single‐SNP association findings, but there has been, so far, no investigation resulting in the discovery of a replicable gene–gene interaction. In this paper, we examine some of the possible explanations for the lack of findings, and argue that coverage of causal variation not only has a large effect on the loss in power, but that the effect is larger than in the single‐SNP analyses. We show that the product of linkage disequilibrium measures, r 2 , between causal and tested SNPs offers a good approximation to the loss in efficiency as defined by the ratio of sample sizes that lead to similar power. We also demonstrate that, in addition to the huge search space, the loss in power due to coverage when using commercially available platforms makes the search for gene–gene interactions daunting.