NIH Goes After Whole Genome in Search of Disease Genes

摘要

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is ramping up efforts to find genes involved in common diseases. A wave of new projects will take advantage of reduced costs to search for disease genes in people who are already enrolled in existing studies, including the famed Framingham Heart Study. The data will be freely available to other scientists. Genetic studies on large groups aren't new. But few have searched the entire genomes of participants for common genetic markers called single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). That step is needed to go beyond studying candidate genes to find new genes that slightly raise disease risk.