title: Twins. Novel uses to study complex traits and genetic diseases.
abstract: The challenge faced by research into the genetic basis of complex disease is to identify genes of small relative effect against a background of substantial genetic and environmental variation. This has focused interest on a classical epidemiological design: the study of twins. Through their precise matching for age, the common family environment and background environmental variation, studying diseases in non-identical twins provides a means to enhance the power of conventional strategies to detect genetic influence through linkage and association. The unique matching of identical twins provides researchers with ways to isolate the function of individual genes involved in disease together with approaches to understanding how genes and the environment interact.
authors.affiliation: Twin Research and Genetic Epidemiology Unit, St Thomas' Hospital, London, UK. alex.macgregor@kcl.ac.uk
authors.forename: A J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: MacGregor
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Snieder
authors.forename: N J
authors.initials: NJ
authors.lastname: Schork
authors.forename: T D
authors.initials: TD
authors.lastname: Spector
mesh_terms: D004200:Diseases in Twins / Q000235:genetics; D004777:Environment; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation / Q000235:genetics; D008040:Genetic Linkage; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D006801:Humans; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D018433:Twin Studies as Topic; D014429:Twins, Dizygotic; D014430:Twins, Monozygotic / Q000235:genetics