Anatolia boasts over 9,000 years of complex and continuous civilization and stands at the point connecting Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Modern Turkey offers great opportunities for understanding the human genome, with its excellent universities and clinics serving a large, diverse population of large families, relatively high consanguinity, and many local populations of long duration. These populations are of particular research value homozygosity mapping of autosomal recessive mendelian diseases and in the establishment of extended haplotypes for understanding the genetic component of common diseases. This research agenda fits well with the local priority of understanding the causes of a range of individually rare but sometimes locally prevalent genetic disorders. Gains from this basic and translational research will be greatest when researchers are connected by a network of mutually beneficial collaborations worldwide, and this generous-spirited conference was a welcome opportunity for the host to reach out to the world.

For the organizers of this meeting (http://www.medimedgen2009.org/), collaboration is the precondition for success. As Karen Avraham puts it, “There is not a good lab in the world that can work alone...we are really all on the same side.” The Israeli researcher and her Palestinian colleague and co-organizer, Moien Kanaan, have deaf children and their families to help, genes to map and mutations to understand, and they cannot wait for politicians to agree. Their dedication to collaboration is all the more astonishing in the face of restrictions on travel and difficulties in importing lab equipment. Tayfun Özçelik from Turkey and Koulis Yannoukakos from Greece further emphasized that a commitment to human health and the collaborative imperative has led geneticists without borders to become a new conduit for peaceful international cooperation outside the political channels. Encouragingly, this vision was presented again and again in various forms by invited speakers from Cyprus and Lebanon, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, the EU and the United States.

There was much to appreciate at this superb meeting, but in particular, the major research areas illuminated by complementary studies of multiple populations were deafness (Hammadi Ayadi, Mustafa Tekin), cancer (Koulis Yannoukakos, Ephrat Levy-Lahad, Mary-Claire King), neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases (Murat Gunel, Matthew State, Lefkos Middleton) and developmental disorders (Dian Donnai, Han Brunner, Andre Mégarbané, Nurten Akarsu, Aslihan Tolun). The meeting—itself a collaboration between the European Society of Human Genetics (ESHG) and the Turkish Society of Medical Genetics—also delivered a course on medical genetics and genomic analysis in isolated and consanguineous populations, presenting new tools under development to ensure that no geneticist should feel left out. Among these tools are a clinical interface for rare diseases (Orphanet, http://www.orpha.net/), an EU network of excellence dedicated to harmonizing genetic testing services (EuroGentest, http://www.eurogentest.org/) and the regular genetic medicine courses organized by the European Genetics Foundation (http://www.eurogene.org/) that are available to be taken in person or over internet links. Having the organizers of each of these projects together at the meeting was a great opportunity to discuss the ways in which each will work together with mutation and sequence databases to form pipelines of basic and clinical discovery.

Well over half of the content of this journal is now the product of more than one country, and the number and productivity of research consortia are still increasing. Genetic methods work everywhere, and physicians need to care for sick people even in the most severe political and social turmoil. Well-connected geneticists in countries fortunate to be experiencing peace and stability can gain access through their collaborators to the populations needed to discover how the genome functions. That collaboration can inspire hope and solve problems. The rule of reason is not negotiable, nor is hope unrealistic.