Question

Which of the following statements about genome-wide association studies

(GWAS) is false?
(a) GWAS use SNPs to compare populations of people with disease and
people without disease to look for SNPs more likely to be present in those
with disease.
(b) GWAS can be used even if more than one gene can cause the disease of
interest.
(c) Sometimes GWAS will identify SNPs that are associated with a disease
but these SNPs do not affect the gene product of the gene that causes the
disease.
(d) Studies using GWAS only examine SNPs that occur very rarely
(<0.001%) in the population, as those SNPs are most likely to cause
disease.

Answer 1

The false statement about D. GWAS is that they only examine SNPs that occur very rarely in the population. GWAS typically looks at common SNPs to identify genetic associations with complex diseases.

Step-by-step explanation:

The statement about genome-wide association studies (GWAS) that is false is (d) "Studies using GWAS only examine SNPs that occur very rarely(<0.001%) in the population, as those SNPs are most likely to cause disease." In fact, GWAS examines SNPs that are relatively common in the population to identify genetic differences that may contribute to complex diseases, which may be polygenic and influenced by multiple genetic variants.

GWAS can indeed be used to research diseases caused by multiple genes (statement b), and can identify SNPs that are associated with disease without affecting the gene product (statement c). Furthermore, GWAS do rely on SNPs to compare populations with and without a disease to find associations (statement a).