The genetics of infectious disease susceptibility: Has the evidence for epistasis been overestimated?

Abstract

Interactions amongst genes, known as epistasis, are assumed to make a substantial contribution to the genetic variation in infectious disease susceptibility, but this claim is controversial. Here, we focus on the debate surrounding the evolutionary importance of interactions between resistance loci and argue that its role in explaining overall variance in disease outcomes may have been overestimated. © 2013 Hall and Ebert; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.