GWAS as the Detective to Find Genetic Contribution in Diseases

Abstract

Genome-wide association study (GWAS) is a powerful method to understand the complex association of variant in gene and disease phenotype. With the approach of GWAS, the traditional “one gene to one disease” belief has been taken to another dimension where a rather complex scenario of many possible causal agent (polymorphisms) behind disease onset is explicitly explored. It also gives the liberty to monitor the difference at each point of DNA for each individual in the sample. GWAS is powered with genome mapping projects and depends on stringent statistical analysis that detects the association of polymorphisms to disease phenotype after comparing the samples collected from afflicted and un-afflicted population. However, this method also has its own limitations. But with careful experiment design and unbiased analysis this GWAS, in near future, will become a new edge technology to decipher the disease mechanism so that effective therapeutics, tailored for specific cases can be developed.