Highly read on www.plosgenetics.org 17 June–17 July

Data collected by a personal genetic testing company in California reveal new associations between two genomic areas and a risk of Parkinson's disease.

Chuong Do and Nicholas Eriksson at 23andMe in Mountain View and their colleagues compared the genomic sequences of more than 3,400 people with Parkinson's disease with those from 29,000 23andMe customers who reported not having the disease in an e-mail questionnaire. The authors confirmed 20 previous genetic associations with the disease in addition to revealing the two new links. However, they suggest that many more genetic associations with the disease remain to be found.

PLoS Genet. 7, e1002141 (2011)