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Heritability

Definition
AI-generated

Heritability describes how much phenotypic variance is attributable to genetic differences.

Topics
Core genetics
Related
Broad-Sense Heritability Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) LD Score Regression

Why it matters in GWAS

It frames how much signal GWAS might recover in principle and motivates missing heritability: family-based estimates often exceed variance explained by discovered variants, reflecting rare variants, imperfect tagging, and non-additive architecture.

Example usage

"We reported LDSC SNP heritability on the liability scale for the binary phenotype and compared it to twin-based estimates."

Broad-Sense Heritability Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) LD Score Regression Liability Scale Missing Heritability Narrow-Sense Heritability Omnigenic Model Observed Scale Phenotype Polygenic Risk Score (PRS) SNP Heritability Trait Linkage Disequilibrium (LD)
Related-term network

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References

  • Visscher PM, Hill WG, Wray NR. (2008). Heritability in the genomics era. Nat Rev Genet.
  • Yang J, et al. (2017). Concepts, estimation and interpretation of SNP-based heritability. Nat Genet.
  • GWASTutorial: Heritability concepts.
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