Obesity is influenced by a complex interaction between the environment, genetic predisposition, and human behavior. It is associated with an increased risk of numerous chronic diseases. It is also associated with an increased risk of death in populations of European ancestry and black women [110]. As a result, obesity epidemic exerts a heavy toll on the economy with its massive health care costs. There is growing evidence that genetic predisposition confers obesity. Nevertheless, despite the enormous success of genetic studies, there are still important gaps in this knowledge. The established loci in combination can only explain <2% of interindividual variation in BMI [111]. Given that the heritability of BMI is estimated at 40–70%, it is reasonable to assume that many more susceptibility loci remain to be uncovered. To this task, powerful genome-wide association studies and other genome-level approaches are expected to be utilized widely, including large-scale genome-wide resequencing and global level of corporation.
