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From gene expression to disease risk

Nature Genetics volume 40, pages 492–493 (2008)Cite this article

Gene expression can be an indicator of cellular state, and studies characterizing variation in gene expression have been useful on the cellular level. Two new studies now provide the first direct demonstration of the successful use of the multidimensionality of gene expression to dissect the genetic architecture of complex diseases.

The genetics of variation in gene expression, or genetical genomics, has attracted significant interest in the last decade, with many studies characterizing its genetic architecture1,2,3,4,5. In addition, several studies have demonstrated the potential causal impact of differential gene expression on complex disease risk6,7. Two new studies8,9 now take the field a step further toward understanding the correlation between gene expression and specific disease phenotypes by combining gene expression and clinical information or disease traits in large human population samples and segregating mouse populations, respectively.

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Figure 1: Genetic basis of disease-related quantitative traits.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Emmanouil T. Dermitzakis is at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, CB10 1SA Cambridge, UK. md4@sanger.ac.uk,

    Emmanouil T Dermitzakis

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  1. Emmanouil T Dermitzakis
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Dermitzakis, E. From gene expression to disease risk. Nat Genet 40, 492–493 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng0508-492

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