Large scale sequencing studies and genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified 1000s of genotype–phenotype associations (Welter et al., 2014). Some of the phenotype-associated variants alter gene function and many of them are in linkage disequilibrium with the functional variants. The functional impacts of variants can be predicted using bioinformatic algorithms, but the in silico predictions are often incorrect and need experimental validation. While there are several experimental methods to functionally test variants, most do not have the capacity to simultaneously test the large number of variants.
