[subroutine]

This is precisely what I was thinking. Something interesting that I hadn't thought of before is that we now actually live in a time where genome sequencing has become cheap enough that low-N studies (like those in MRI/fMRI-based studies) can actually begin to participant-match based on genetic background. This might become the new gold standard!

[adrianN]

Sequencing might become cheap enough to do that, but our understanding of the functions of the different genes is so lacking that I don't think a lot of meaningful data can be extracted for most studies' subjects.

[subroutine]

I don't think we necessarily need to know the function of the genes in order to create a participant matching paradigm that is better than what is being employed currently. For example we can get a more precise snapshot of ancestry using sequencing than simply relying on self-reported 'race'. Also I don't think it needs to be a perfect match; simply stating that controls matched case participants within X percent ancestry would be a useful statistic to report in the methods.

[jdietrich]

We don't necessarily understand the functions of genes, but we're starting to establish strong correlations through genome-wide association studies.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/09/06/184853.1