In The Field
ASHG 2008 Kicks off
Last night the American Society of Human Genetics meeting started in Philadelphia and kicked off with a crowded mixer featuring classic Philly fare (hoagies and pretzels). I asked Aravinda Chakravarti what he thought the major themes of the meeting would be. He said he was glad to report that the field has moved slightly away from data to new ideas. New ideas including better understanding of the genetic structure of disease and the characterization and understanding of the meaning of structure in the genome, including copy number variations (a term that appears in the abstract book more than 200 times). That’s not to say that data have taken a back seat.