Abstract
Deep Genealogy and the Dilution of Risk
Highlights
We know that many of the common diseases that afflict human populations are at least partly caused by the genes we inherit
In contrast to the classic rare ‘‘Mendelian’’ genetic diseases, where inheritance of rare but severe mutations at a single gene can make the difference between sickness and health, the genetic risk of getting common maladies like, for example, Alzheimer disease, diabetes, or depression is altogether fuzzier in nature
Common and individually mild mutations in many genes combine to raise our personal susceptibility to the point at which they might connive with environmental factors to trigger the disease state
Summary
We know that many of the common diseases that afflict human populations are at least partly caused by the genes we inherit. It’s obviously much harder to pin down this distributed kind of genetic risk than it is to identify the mutations responsible for a Mendelian disease, but the last decade and a half has seen the rise of a clever solution—the Genome-Wide Association Study or GWAS, a triumph of technology, statistics, and sheer ambition.
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