Genetic inheritance may sound straightforward: One gene causes one trait or a specific illness. When doctors use genetics, it's usually to try to identify a disease-causing gene to help guide diagnosis and treatment. But for most health conditions, the genetics is far more complicated than how clinicians are currently looking at it in diagnosis, counseling and treatment. Your DNA carries millions of genetic variants you inherit from your parents or develop by chance. Some are common variants, shared by many people. Others are rare variants, found in very few people or even unique to a family. Together, these variants shape who you are ' from visible traits such as height or eye color to health conditions such as diabetes or heart disease. In our newly published research in the journal Cell, my team and I found that a genetic mutation involved in neurodevelopmental and psychiatric conditions such as autism and schizophrenia is affected by multiple other genetic variants, changing how...
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