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Well-known inherited syndromes — such as familial adenomatous polyposis, hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (CRC), and MUTYH-associated polyposis — account for about 5% to 6% of CRC cases. An additional 10% to 15% occur in people with family histories of CRC for which a genetic basis is not clearly defined. Recent genome-wide research has focused on mutations that might account for previously unexplained genetic risk or other phenotypic variation in CRC, even though individually their penetrance in the population is lower than that of the well-known inherited syndromes. To date, about 10 such low-penetrance variants have been found. Now, researchers have studied these low-penetrance genetic variants in two cohorts of CRC patients; th…