Yao et al. found that certain brain enhancers were functionally conserved between mice (left) and acorn worm (right), despite very limited sequence conservation. {credit}Douglas Epstein{/credit}
A study published this week in Nature Genetics shows that enhancers can be conserved across very long evolutionary distances, even without extensive sequence conservation. Continue reading
The 7th annual The Genomics of Common Diseases conference is taking place this weekend, from September 7-10, in Keble College, Oxford University. At this conference, we seek to represent a top selection of the latest research characterizing the genetic basis of a range of common diseases.
We held the first Genomics of Common Diseases conference in 2007, with a program that highlighted rapid advancements in identifying common variants associated with a range of common diseases, made possible by new methods enabling genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Over the past seven years, our understanding of the genetic architecture of disease has been progressively redefined by GWAS characterizing common variation, the fine mapping of associated regions, the emergence and growth of new sequencing technologies and the assessment of rare variant association. We have represented the progress in the field facilitated by rapid improvements in and reduced costs of genotyping and sequencing technologies. We have also seen rapid growth in the scale of genetic datasets, with the need to analyze progressively larger sample sizes. Our sixth annual conference focused both on presenting the latest applied technologies and on how to meet challenges posed by the analysis and interpretation of these large-scale genetic datasets. Continue reading