Multifactorial inheritance of human disease has been hypothesized, noted and speculated ever since the 1960’s. However, it is only very recently we have had the tools to begin to uncover the details and we have very few examples of the architecture, both genetic and otherwise, of complex disease. Aravinda Chakravarti, Ph.D., of The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, discusses several examples of genetic dissection. He notes how risk assessment of individuals, based on multiple factors can be a challenging task in the absence of well characterized population-based samples; assembling and identifying them should now become a priority.