Genetics Beyond Diabetes and Baldness

Abstract

Previously the concept of genetics was applied to a limited number of diseases with obvious phenotypes where simple people use to observe and relate. It was never easy to establish a clear cut of heritability range between genetic variation and a risk of suffering from a complex disorder due to many reasons including but not limited to; gene variations, non-linear interactions between genetic variance and phenotype severity, complex gene-gene interactions and many others [1]. However, every day, scientists in a research lab somewhere discover a genetic linkage to a disease or a syndrome. This has gone far beyond simple imagination where traits or syndromes used to be related almost exclusively to environment are now genetically linked. The difficulty of identification of patterns among the affected people and the involvement of multiple genes and environmental effects were all behind the difficulty in understanding the link of some of these syndromes/diseases or desired traits to genetics. Advances in genetics/ genomics and molecular biology have enabled geneticists to decipher some of the genes that are believed to be linked to some diseases. Recently genetic links has been established to many entities some of which were never thought of as linked with genetics while some were linked to genetics but with no understanding of their patterns. Obesity, neurological disorders, intelligence, asthma, cardiovascular diseases, periodontal diseases, longevity, deafness, cataracts, cancer are just few of the entities that are positively linked to genetics. This editorial will focus mainly on neuropsychiatric genetics including substance addiction, smoking and the genetics of anger.