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Recent genome-wide association and expression array studies have provided new insights into prostate cancer genetics. The germline and somatic variants identified in these studies have been proposed to predict prostate cancer risk and aggressiveness. These results are discussed in the context of their implications for the screening and treatment of prostate cancer.
Looking back over the relationship between natural selection and genetics highlights the important role of genetics in understanding the implications of Darwin's concept. Looking to the future, understanding the reach and role of selection also has profound implications for genetics.
Small RNAs — including miRNAs, siRNAs and piRNAs — differ in their biogenesis, modes of target regulation and biological functions. There are also interconnections between these pathways, which compete and collaborate in some of their regulatory and protective roles.
Recent discoveries of genetic contributors to plasma lipid and lipoprotein levels, which are key risk factors for cardiovascular disease, have shown new avenues for research into basic metabolic pathways and could lead to improvements in disease diagnosis and treatment.
A realistic understanding of how a biological system arises from interactions between its parts increasingly depends on quantitative mathematical and statistical modelling. This Review explains how statistical inferences and stochastic modelling are the best tools we have for describing heterogeneous biological systems.
Several models exist to explain the architecture of complex disease traits — each with its limitations. In this Perspective article it is proposed instead that human traits are canalized, and that their perturbation by genetic or environmental differences exposes genetic variation, leading to increased disease risk.
Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) are hierarchically connected sub-circuits composed of genes and thecis-regulatory sequences on which they act. The authors propose that evolutionary alterations in morphology depend on the position in the GRN hierarchy at which regulatory change occurs.
