Large scale DNA sequencing: New challenges emerge - The 2007 human genome variation society scientific meeting

The annual scientific meeting of the Human Genome Variation Society (HGVS) was held on 23 October 2007, in San Diego, CA. The major theme of this meeting was "New DNA Sequencing Technologies & Human Genome Variation." A series of speakers provided information on several new technologies that produce DNA sequence data on a scale far beyond what was possible even a few years ago. These new technologies produce up to gigabases of nucleotides on a single run. Already, two individuals have had their entire genome sequenced, resulting in the identification of many novel DNA variants. Several new questions now need to be answered. What impact do these novel variants have on the phenotypes? How are we to associate private variants in a single individual with disease, especially when current association studies require genotyping thousands of individuals? Further work will be required to create methodologies to analyze these variants to determine if they are potentially disease-producing or are phenotypically silent. For the technology to be useful in a medical setting it will be crucial to answer to these questions.