About the cover
Your life in your hands: Instructions for the personal genome age
As the number of humans with their genomes fully sequenced grows and direct-to-consumer gene profiling companies push the boundaries of medical genetics, the once fanciful idea that medical and other interventions can be tailored around an individual's personal genome begins to look plausible. Which raises the question: how do we use this wealth of information? This issue focuses on personal genomics and its consequences. In News Features we seek the 'missing heritability' that seems to limit the number of disease-linked genes being found [page 18], look at a technology that may drive next generation of DNA sequencing machines [page 23] and reflect on the surprise closure of a lab at the forefront of genomics research [page 26]. Commentaries discuss the problems of balancing an individual's rights to privacy with the maximization for public benefit [page 32] and the ethics of personal genome tests [page 34]. These matters are considered in the Editorial [page 1] and go to
