Life After GWAS: For Some Researchers, Focus Shifts to Rare Variants, CNVs | GenomeWeb Daily News | Sequencing | GenomeWeb

Over the last several years, genome-wide association studies have become the primary method for identifying variations associated with human disease, but the approach has shortcomings that are leading some in the genomics community to push more aggressively into the post-GWAS era.

At Cambridge Healthtech Institute's Genomic Tools and Technologies Summit held here this week, many speakers noted that even though GWA studies have linked hundreds of common SNPs to disease, these variants account for only a very small portion of disease heritability, which has raised doubts over their clinical value. A number of talks focused on two key alternatives to GWAS: the discovery of rare variants, as opposed to common variants, with a role in disease; and an increasing focus on copy number variants rather than SNPs.

Life After GWAS: For Some Researchers, Focus Shifts to Rare Variants, CNVs | GenomeWeb Daily News | Sequencing | GenomeWeb

"GWAS was never meant to substitute for fine genomic sequencing," but rather to identify regions of linkage disequilibrium in the genome that warrant further study

Life After GWAS: For Some Researchers, Focus Shifts to Rare Variants, CNVs | GenomeWeb Daily News | Sequencing | GenomeWeb

Lupski said that efforts like the 1000 Genomes Project will likely produce valuable information that will drive improvements in the use of sequencing for CNV detection. "It's coming along," he said. "I think this will be solved."