this stringent statistical threshold could very well hide evidence for identification of true positives as novel variants. Below we present the findings of a series of GWAS of alcohol dependence where biological functional information could be derived relevant to the stages of the addiction cycle. We used several criteria for choosing which candidate genes to discuss: Firstly, because it is commonly acknowledged that the first generation of GWAS of alcohol dependence were grossly underpowered due to small initial sample sizes resulting in many SNPs that do not meet the stringent genome-wide significant threshold (p < 10–8), we focus only on the top-ranking SNPs generally with p values of 10–4 or less.Second, after considering the set of top-ranking SNPs from each GWAS we selected SNPs for discussion based on whether a logical biological hypothesis could be generated from extant literature and whether this functional hypothesis was relevant to a stage of the addiction cycle.Third, only GWAS examining the phenotype of alcohol dependence are considered; GWAS examining alcohol consumption in non-dependent subjects are excluded.Fourth, priority was given to candidate genes with SNPs in non-intergenic regions of the genome The majority of the SNPs we discuss are found in introns (see Table 3)Fifth,
