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Genomics

Resident risks

Nature volume 490, pages 44–46 (2012)Cite this article

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An innovative method for probing the genomes of the vast community of microorganisms that inhabit the human gut provides an alternative approach to identifying risk factors for type 2 diabetes. See Letter p.55

The interplay between genetics and the environment in controlling our health remains an open area of investigation. Technological advances in genome sequencing and analysis have empowered the search for the genetic determinants of human traits and diseases, but genetic variants that directly cause disease have so far been identified for only a small proportion of common diseases. For many other conditions, variants that increase disease risk are known, but the incompleteness of these associations suggests that environmental factors significantly contribute to the likelihood of development of these diseases.

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Figure 1: Mining the metagenome.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Julia Oh and Julia A. Segre are at the National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892-4442, USA.,

    Julia Oh & Julia A. Segre

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  1. Julia Oh
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  2. Julia A. Segre
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Correspondence to Julia Oh or Julia A. Segre.

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Oh, J., Segre, J. Resident risks. Nature 490, 44–46 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/490044a

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