Alternatively, our results could help inform deep resequencing efforts to identify rare variants that influence lifespan, a particularly suitable approach for genes in which multiple variants exert individual effects too weak to be detected by association methods.
Modestly powered genome-wide association studies (GWAS 5,6,7,8,9,10 have enabled more than 20 additional risk loci to be identified and have shown that multiple variants exerting modest individual effects have a key role in disease susceptibility11.
Sometimes such a victory requires a single dramatic intervention fraught with risk; at other times, a series of multiple, small interventions whose individual effects may be minor but whose collective power is vast.
In addition to adjusting for multiple individual, contextual, and spatial effects, a key strength of this study includes the large sample size and number of deaths necessary to detect mortality associations at relatively low concentrations of PM2.5.
Complex traits can result from the combined effects of multiple individual genes, combinations of genetic and environmental influences, or various molecular effects such as DNA instability or histone methylation (a chemical change in a chromosome protein).
Complex traits are likely influenced by multiple QTL that have small individual effects but a large collective effect on the phenotype.
Therefore most trans regulators that effect multiple genes might have small individual effects making them hard to detect by genetic mapping and give the misleading impression that cis regulation is the dominant form.
OP is an attractive measure because it integrates the effects of multiple individual PM components on health.
As indicated, few studies to date have investigated the mediating effects of multiple individual measures of adult SEP on subjective health measures such as psychological distress and specific health behaviours such as binge drinking in adulthood.
It is also shown that the profile score is robust for counting the coupling effect of multiple individual mutations.
