Most complex diseases like heart disease and cancer are caused by both genetic and environmental factors. In the past two decades, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have convincingly identified thousands of risk loci for hundreds of disease traits and defined their genetic architecture. However, known genetic loci collectively only explain a small fraction of trait variance, indicating a large proportion of disease incidences are attributable to environmental factors or gene-environment interactions. On the other hand, the high throughput exposome assessment and multi-omics profiling technology are quickly evolving. The research field is now in a new era of opportunity to systematically investigate the interplay between environment and genetic risks and elucidate the molecular underpinnings of human diseases.
Studying gene-environment interaction is an interdisciplinary research field. This special issue has a broad scope and is designed to capture the diverse directions and topics. We aim to collect submissions on the discovery, measurement, annotation, computational and experimental methodology, functional characterization of gene-environmental interaction and subsequent human disease risks. Given the recent advances in genetics of human disease, multi-omics, and exposomics, this special issue is particularly interested in reports and reviews on the concepts, study designs and applications leveraging the genetic architecture of human disease, novel high throughput exposure assessment approaches and existing large human cohorts to revolutionize our understanding in gene-environmental interaction and human disease risks.
The scope of this Research Topic includes, but is not limited to the following sub-topics:
• Discovery of genetic loci and environmental factors that interact and result in disease predisposition.
• Identification of genetic disease risks and effect size that are modified by environmental factors.
• Novel statistical methodology in testing for gene-environmental interaction.
• Functional analyses on the molecular mechanisms of gene-environmental interaction.
• Whole genome and polygenic risk score analyses to capture the interplay of environmental exposure and global genetic risk.
• Analysis of pathways or gene networks with key roles in gene-environmental interaction.
• Bioinformatics software, tools and databases related to gene-environmental interaction.
• Perspectives of gene-environmental interactions in precision medicine applications towards disease prevention.
Most complex diseases like heart disease and cancer are caused by both genetic and environmental factors. In the past two decades, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have convincingly identified thousands of risk loci for hundreds of disease traits and defined their genetic architecture. However, known genetic loci collectively only explain a small fraction of trait variance, indicating a large proportion of disease incidences are attributable to environmental factors or gene-environment interactions. On the other hand, the high throughput exposome assessment and multi-omics profiling technology are quickly evolving. The research field is now in a new era of opportunity to systematically investigate the interplay between environment and genetic risks and elucidate the molecular underpinnings of human diseases.
Studying gene-environment interaction is an interdisciplinary research field. This special issue has a broad scope and is designed to capture the diverse directions and topics. We aim to collect submissions on the discovery, measurement, annotation, computational and experimental methodology, functional characterization of gene-environmental interaction and subsequent human disease risks. Given the recent advances in genetics of human disease, multi-omics, and exposomics, this special issue is particularly interested in reports and reviews on the concepts, study designs and applications leveraging the genetic architecture of human disease, novel high throughput exposure assessment approaches and existing large human cohorts to revolutionize our understanding in gene-environmental interaction and human disease risks.
The scope of this Research Topic includes, but is not limited to the following sub-topics:
• Discovery of genetic loci and environmental factors that interact and result in disease predisposition.
• Identification of genetic disease risks and effect size that are modified by environmental factors.
• Novel statistical methodology in testing for gene-environmental interaction.
• Functional analyses on the molecular mechanisms of gene-environmental interaction.
• Whole genome and polygenic risk score analyses to capture the interplay of environmental exposure and global genetic risk.
• Analysis of pathways or gene networks with key roles in gene-environmental interaction.
• Bioinformatics software, tools and databases related to gene-environmental interaction.
• Perspectives of gene-environmental interactions in precision medicine applications towards disease prevention.
