Volume 9 Issue 6, June 2008

Advances in genomics and gene mapping allow sets of candidate genes to be identified for use in monitoring adaptive responses to specific environmental stresses. Such toolkits will allow us to predict the ability of species to adapt to changing environments.

Making ethanol from cellulose-containing parts of plants is a promising route to abundant biofuel production. Using genetics to decrease the need for crop pretreatment and processing, and to increase yield, will be important in making bioethanol an affordable and plentiful fuel.

The combination of environmental change and a rapidly increasing human population is putting global food supplies in danger. Crop improvements that increase yields and enable plants to withstand abiotic stresses will provide an important route to tackling this urgent problem.

Despite its potential benefits, opposition to transgenic crops remains strong in influential European countries. This article explores the basis for this opposition and looks at its implications for applying transgenic technology in poorer nations, where it is needed the most.

Rather than being a mark of irreversible gene silencing that localizes mainly to promoters and intergenic regions, epigenomics approaches are revealing DNA methylation as a surprisingly dynamic regulator of gene expression that might also have important roles within gene bodies.

Linkage disequilibrium was once a concept used little outside population genetics. However, in the genomics era it has become fundamental to our understanding of the genetic variation that is behind complex traits and evolutionary change.

The authors explore large-scale population genotyping projects in Mexico, India and Thailand to demonstrate that developing countries can harness human genetic variation to benefit their populations — by adopting these resources to improve public health and create knowledge-based economies.

A number of pressing, interrelated, global challenges face the human race in the 21st century: environmental change, population growth and a rapid decline in fossil fuel reserves. This Focus issue looks at ways in which genetics can be harnessed to address these problems, from crop genetic engineering for improved yields and economical biofuel production, to the genetic monitoring of effects of environmental change on the world's biodiversity.