title: Twins and the mystery of missing heritability: the contribution of gene-environment interactions.
abstract: Since 2006, the advent of increasingly larger genome-wide association studies and their meta-analyses have led to numerous, replicated findings of genetic polymorphisms associated with many diseases and traits. Early studies suggested that the identified loci generally accounted for a small fraction of the genetic variance estimated from twin and family studies. This led to the concept of 'missing heritability'. Here, the progress in accounting for a greater proportion of the variance is reviewed. In particular, gene-environment interactions can, for some traits and in certain circumstances, explain part of this missing heritability.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health, Hjelt Institute, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. jaakko.kaprio@helsinki.fi
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kaprio
mesh_terms: D004200:Diseases in Twins / Q000235:genetics*; D059647:Gene-Environment Interaction; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D006801:Humans; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic / Q000235:genetics; D018433:Twin Studies as Topic; D014427:Twins / Q000235:genetics*