GIANT consortium finds hundreds of variants associated with adult human height

The GIANT consortium reports results from a meta-analysis of GWAS data from 46 studies into the genetic basis of adult height, involving a total of over 130,000 individuals:

Lango Allen, H., Estrada, K., Lettre, G. et al. Hundreds of variants clustered in genomic loci and biological pathways affect human height. Nature, advance online publication 29 September 2010. doi:10.1038/nature09410

[from the abstact]

[..]Here, using 183,727 individuals, we show that hundreds of genetic variants, in at least 180 loci, influence adult height, a highly heritable and classic polygenic trait.

[..]

Our data explain approximately 10% of the phenotypic variation in height, and we estimate that unidentified common variants of similar effect sizes would increase this figure to approximately 16% of phenotypic variation (approximately 20% of heritable variation). Although additional approaches are needed to dissect the genetic architecture of polygenic human traits fully, our findings indicate that GWA studies can identify large numbers of loci that implicate biologically relevant genes and pathways.