title: Asthma Genetics in the Post-GWAS Era.
abstract: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of asthma have yielded exciting results and identified novel risk alleles and loci. But, like other common complex diseases, asthma-associated alleles have small effect sizes and account for little of the prevalence of asthma. In this review, I discuss the limitations of GWAS approaches and the major challenges facing geneticists in the post-GWAS era and propose alternative strategies to address these challenges. In particular, I propose that focusing on genetic variations that influences gene expression and using cell models of gene-environment interactions in cell types that are relevant to asthma will allow us to more completely characterize the genetic architecture of asthma.
authors.affiliation: Department of Human Genetics, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
authors.forename: Carole
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ober
mesh_terms: D001249:Asthma / Q000235:genetics*; D059647:Gene-Environment Interaction; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D014644:Genetic Variation; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans
keywords: asthma; epigenomics; gene-environment interaction; genetic variation; quantitative trait loci