Thus, while the mere presence of a variant in dbSNP is a blunt tool for variant filtering, dbSNP's
deep allele frequency data make it incredibly powerful for genetics studies: it can rule out variants that are too prevalent to be disease - causing, and prioritize ones that are rarely observed in human populations.
Importantly,
allele frequency data are most useful when the population matches the ancestry of the sample (s) being studied.
Thanks to efforts like the Exome Aggregation Consortium, we now have
allele frequency data from cohorts of more than 50,000 individuals.