Gene-Gene Interactions
Increasing
evidence show that host genetic factors determine susceptibility to
developing disease. These factors are complex, and examining them in
isolation may result in missing the effect of factors that do not act
independently, i.e. when the effect of one gene on disease outcome is
modified by the variant of another gene.
It is therefore important
to understand the role of gene-gene interactions, commonly referred to
as epistasis, in susceptibility to tuberculosis infection.
The
statistical tools and methods we use to find interactions in our large
tuberculosis case-control sample bank are also relevant to other complex
diseases with multiple underlying genetic causes.
