Genetic Epidemiology of Complex Phenotypes

Genetic factors play a substantive role in the susceptibility to common diseases. Due to recent advancements in the characterization of genetic variants and large-scale genotyping platforms, multiple genes have now been identified for common, complex diseases. As a result, there is an immense interest in elucidating genetic factors in complex traits. Therefore, it is important to understand the design as well as the technical and statistical issues of the two most common approaches for gene identification: linkage and association.