Because at least 60% of Drosophila genes have conserved human orthologs, the latter can be identified and superimposed on computationally predicted networks from Drosophila. This allows identification of candidate genes for subsequent human association studies based on a previous unbiased genome-wide approach in Drosophila. Not only can this strategy empower human association analysis by reducing the prohibitive multiple testing correction of a GWAS, but it provides also functional contexts to the candidate genes as they form part of defined networks.
