Genome-wide association approaches for identifying loci for human height genes.

Human height is a very heritable trait as most of other human anthropometric traits. Genome-wide association studies have thus far identified about 200 genes associated with height with a genome-wide significance. Very large meta-analyses were needed to achieve this. These 200 height genes are involved in various biologically plausible pathways for growth, but yet explain only 10% of the variance in height. So it is obvious, that the GIANT-consortium height meta-analysis leaves, as most of GWA studies, a major part of the genetic variation unexplained. Much work utilizing several different strategies and very large study cohorts are needed to identify more genes for growth.