Twins - novel uses to study complex traits and genetic diseases

The challenge faced by research into the genetic basis of complex disease i s to identify genes of small relative effect against a background of substa ntial genetic and environmental variation. This has focused interest on a c lassical epidemiological design: the study of twins. Through their precise matching for age, the common family environment and background environmenta l variation, studying diseases in non-identical twins provides a means to e nhance the power of conventional strategies to detect genetic influence thr ough linkage and association. The unique matching of identical twins provid es researchers with ways to isolate the function of individual genes involv ed in disease together with approaches to understanding how genes and the e nvironment interact.