Tracking the 'social networks' of genes disrupted in complex diseases
Your personal risk of developing complex diseases such as diabetes, depression or cancer is influenced in part by genetic variants, that is, letters in your DNA sequence that differ between people. These variants disrupt networks of interacting genes in different tissues of your body, two studies have found. Innovative software tools allowed the scientists to construct accurate “maps” of gene networks for about 400 different human cell and tissue types, ranging from immune cells to brain tissues, whereas previous studies were limited to just one or few tissues. Each of these networks describes hundreds of thousands of regulatory interactions among thousands of genes, giving the first global view of the “control system” of diverse cells and tissues.