The genetic etiologies of multiple cardiovascular disorders have been identified recently. For
the most part, familial cardiomyopathic, vascular, or arrhythmogenic disorders have been
studied given the opportunity to identify the disease gene by linkage analyses, positional
cloning, and analysis of candidate genes. Given that structural congenital heart disease
rarely occurs in the context of large families, alternative approaches to understand the
possible genetic etiologies have been taken. ln particular, molecular evaluations of genetic …