In biomedical research, plant breeding, and countless other endeavors, geneticists are on the hunt for the specific genes responsible for disease susceptibility, yield, and other traits of interest. Essentially, they’re looking for needles in the enormous haystack that is the genome of an organism.

As a frame of reference, the human genome is made up of 3.2 billion base pairs, an estimated 30,000 genes. Where do geneticists even start?

For the past 15 years, many have relied on genome-wide association studies (GWAS).