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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Oct 1.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Opin Allergy Clin Immunol. 2014 Oct;14(5):381–389. doi: 10.1097/ACI.0000000000000102

Figure 1. Ancestral Admixture and Genetic Research in Complex Diseases.

Figure 1

Genetic research studies the role of genetic variability in determining risk for complex airway diseases, related phenotypes, and disease severity. Genetic risk can be directly altered by gene variation that impacts biological function directly or through gene-by-environment interactions. The population structures of modern human genomes represent varying degrees of genetic diversity due to recent admixture which impacts the allele frequency of individual variants which determine phenotype in different racial or ethnic groups. In addition, individuals from these different populations share similarities in languages, social experiences, and cultural behaviors which could result in differences in environmental exposures and gene-by-environment interactions which confound gene variant associations.