Fig. 2.

Epigenetic epidemiology. New genome-scale tools for epigenetic analysis will allow us to determine the relationship between genetic variation, epigenetic variation, and disease simultaneously. The area of overlap is deliberately drawn as the larger fraction of the overlap between genetics and phenotype to emphasize that most genetic findings must be considered in an epigenetic context and to highlight that the full value of typical genetic epidemiology studies cannot be realized until the complementary epigenetic measures and statistical tools are developed and performed on these samples