Genetics

Genetics is the branch of science concerned with genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms. It seeks to understand the process of trait inheritance from parents to offspring, including the molecular structure and function of genes, gene behaviour in the context of a cell or organism (e.g. dominance and epigenetics), gene distribution, and variation and change in populations.

Featured

Latest Research and Reviews

All Research & Reviews

News and Comment

  • News & Views |

    The largest GWAS for kidney function so far provided the starting point for integrated multi-stage annotation of genetic loci. Whole kidney and single-cell epigenomic information is crucial for translating GWAS information to the identification of causal genes and pathogenetic (and potentially targetable) cellular and molecular mechanisms of kidney disease.

    Nature Genetics, 1-2

  • News & Views |

    The use of association studies to identify candidate genes for complex biological traits in plants has been challenging due to a reliance on single reference genomes, leading to missing heritability. Graphical pangenomes and the identification of causal variants help overcome this and provide an important advance for crop breeding.

    • David Edwards
    •  & Jacqueline Batley
    Nature Genetics, 1-2

  • Comments & Opinion |

    In this Comment, the authors highlight caveats about using African ethnicities as population categories in genomics research and emphasize the need for an Africa-oriented humanities research agenda to inform genomics research.

    • Henri-Michel Yéré
    • , Mavis Machirori
    •  & Jantina De Vries
    Nature Reviews Genetics, 1-2

  • Comments & Opinion |

    The release of the first telomere-to-telomere (T2T) human genome sequence marks a milestone for human genomics research and holds promise of complete genomes for evolutionary genomic studies. Here we describe the advances that this new human genome assembly represents and explore the potential insights that the complete genome sequence could bring to evolutionary genomics. We also discuss the potential challenges to be faced in applying this new sequencing strategy to a broad spectrum of extant species.

    • Yafei Mao
    •  & Guojie Zhang
    Nature Methods 19, 635-638
All News & Comment