ESR1 and breast carcinoma: For example, usage of breast cancer epigenome facilitated the discovery of a GWAS-linked functional variant that disrupts a binding site of FOXA1, which is a critical pioneer factor in estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancers (Cowper-Sal lari et al., 2012); similarly, another study identified a functional diabetes-associated variant using the epigenomic information in adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (Claussnitzer et al., 2015).