Considerations in the search for epistasis

Epistasis refers to changes in the effect on phenotype of a unit of genetic information, such as a single nucleotide polymorphism or a gene, dependent on the context of other genetic units. Such interactions are both biologically plausible and good candidates to explain observations which are not fully explained by an additive heritability model. However, the search for epistasis has so far largely failed to recover this missing heritability. We identify key challenges and propose that future works need to leverage idealized systems, known biology and even previously identified epistatic interactions, in order to guide the search for new interactions

Considerations in the search for epistasis

Epistasis refers to changes in the effect on phenotype of a unit of genetic information, such as a single nucleotide polymorphism or a gene, dependent on the context of other genetic units. Such interactions are both biologically plausible and good candidates to explain observations which are not fully explained by an additive heritability model. However, the search for epistasis has so far largely failed to recover this missing heritability. We identify key challenges and propose that future works need to leverage idealized systems, known biology and even previously identified epistatic interactions, in order to guide the search for new interactions

Author Correction: Considerations in the search for epistasis

Balvert M, Cooper-Knock J, Stamp J, et al. Author Correction: Considerations in the search for epistasis. Genome Biology . 2025;26(1): 12

Correction to: Considerations in the search for epistasis (Genome Biology, (2024), 25, 1, (296), 10.1186/s13059-024-03427-z)

Following publication of the original article [1], the authors identified that two author affiliations were incorrect. Joséphine Daub is affiliated with Utrecht University (21) and not affiliation 9. Sanne Abeln is affiliated with Utrecht University only (21) and not affiliation 1. The original article [1] has been corrected