Response to Zhu et al.

摘要

We welcome this important discussion on the merits of linkage-disequilibrium (LD)-based binning in genome-wide association studies (GWASs). Although Zhu et al. raise valid issues, they also make conclusions that might underestimate the importance of our findings and misguide the reader into disregarding useful information.The relevance of LD to association studies is uncontrover-sial. It is an underlying feature of the genome and describes how SNPs and genes correlate. Specifically, as the same authors have previously acknowledged, "an associated SNP...[might] represent LD between a common tagging SNP and true causal variant."2 Uncovering the true source of the association requires further work. It might lie in a different gene and be more than 1 Mb away.