Genome-wide association approaches for identifying loci for human height genes

Human height is a very heritable trait as most of other human anthropometric traits. Genome-wide association studies have thus far identified about 200 genes associated with height with a genome-wide significance. Very large meta-analyses were needed to achieve this. These 200 height genes are involved in various biologically plausible pathways for growth, but yet explain only 10% of the variance in height. So it is obvious, that the GIANT-consortium height meta-analysis leaves, as most of GWA studies, a major part of the genetic variation unexplained. Much work utilizing several different strategies and very large study cohorts are needed to identify more genes for growth. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.