Architecture. Even though we often write about novel gene findings in the epilepsies, we assume that most epilepsies are complex genetic or polygenic. Polygenic inheritance suggests the genetic architecture is composed of multiple interacting genetic risk factors, each contributing a small proportion to the disease risk. However, when using the phrase genetic architecture, sometimes I am not quite sure what I actually mean by this. For example, how many genes are needed? This is why I wanted to build a model genetic architecture and explore what happens if we build a genetic disease solely from rare risk variants. Follow me to a brief back-of-the-envelope calculation of how this might work.
