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A large genome-wide association study of more than 5 million individuals reveals that 12,111 single-nucleotide polymorphisms account for nearly all the heritability of height attributable to common genetic variants.

Timothy Frayling, Joel Hirschhorn, Peter Visscher and colleagues report a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies for adult height in 253,288 individuals. They identify 697 variants in 423 loci significantly associated with adult height and find that these variants cluster in pathways involved in growth and together explain one-fifth of the heritability for this trait.

Analyses of height and body mass index in 119,000 sibling pairs show that linkage and genome-wide association signals colocalize. Further analyses suggest that family-based linkage signals are fully consistent with a highly polygenic architecture.

Polygenic scores for body mass index and obesity constructed using data from 5 million people with different ancestries were associated with distinct weight gain trajectories from early childhood to adulthood.

Assigning inter-individual similarities to genetic and non-genetic factors is central to quantitative genetics. Here, the authors look at phenotypic covariance among pairs of individuals for 32 traits across the UK Biobank, from nominally unrelated pairs through to monozygotic twins.

Analysis of whole-genome sequences of 25,465 individuals of European ancestry shows that rare variants contribute substantially to the heritability of height and body mass index.

A genome-wide association study in ~3 million individuals identifies 3,952 independent variants associated with educational attainment. A polygenic index explains 12–16% of variance for this trait and contributes to risk prediction for ten diseases.

A genome-wide association study in 293,723 individuals identifies 74 genetic variants associated with educational attainment, which, although only explaining a small proportion of the variation in educational attainment, highlights candidate genes and pathways for further study.

Gene discovery and polygenic predictions from a genome-wide association study of educational attainment in 1.1 million individuals.

Naomi Wray, Peter Visscher and colleagues report analyses of the common variation that contributes to schizophrenia risk within three independent case-control datasets from the Psychiatric GWAS Consortium for schizophrenia. They estimate that 23% of the variation in liability to schizophrenia is captured by SNPs on current platforms.

WGS data were used from 347,630 individuals with European ancestry in the UK Biobank to obtain high-precision estimates of coding and non-coding rare variant heritability for 34 complex traits and diseases.

Genome-wide association analysis in over one million individuals of European ancestry identifies 2,103 independent genetic signals (including 113 new loci) associated with blood pressure traits.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder with a complex etiology involving genetics and the environment. Here, Vallerga et al. identify two CpG probes associated with PD in a blood cell type-corrected epigenome-wide meta-analysis, implicating the SLC7A11 gene as a plausible biological target.

Dosage compensation (DC) on the X chromosome has predictable effects on genetic and phenotypic trait variance. Here, the authors use information for 20 quantitative traits in the UK Biobank and across-tissue gene expression to compare X-linked heritability and the effects of trait-associated SNPs between the sexes.

The accuracy of polygenic scores (PGS) remains limited and poorly transferable across ancestries. In this Comment, Zeng and Visscher discuss how integrating functional annotations with whole-genome sequencing data can improve PGS by prioritizing likely causal variants shared across populations and by assigning greater weight to variants in biologically relevant regions.

Ruth Loos and colleagues report results of a large genome-wide association study for body mass index. They identify 18 new loci associated with this trait, some of which map near key hypothalamic regulators of energy balance.

Peter Visscher and colleagues report an analysis of the heritability explained by common variants identified through genome-wide association studies. They find that 45% of the variance for height can be explained by using a linear model to simultaneously consider the combined effect of common SNPs.

Iron deficiency is the leading cause of anaemia and is known to compromise immune function. Here, the authors identify several new genes associated with iron status in European populations and provide insight into how iron levels may be linked to the risk of metabolic disease.

A genome-wide association study including over 76,000 individuals with schizophrenia and over 243,000 control individuals identifies common variant associations at 287 genomic loci, and further fine-mapping analyses highlight the importance of genes involved in synaptic processes.

A genetic study identifies hundreds of loci associated with risk tolerance and risky behaviors, finds evidence of substantial shared genetic influences across these phenotypes, and implicates genes involved in neurotransmission.

Peter Visscher and colleagues report an analysis to partition the genetic variation for several complex traits onto chromosome segments and find that the variation explained is approximately proportional to the total length of genes included within a chromosome segment. They estimate that ~45%, ~17%, ~25% and ~21% of the phenotypic variation, respectively, for height, body mass index, von Willebrand factor and QT interval is tagged by common SNPs, and they partition this variation by chromosome and chromosome segments.

We discuss the potential consequences and ethical concerns of polygenic genome editing of human embryos to alter specific variants associated with polygenic diseases, highlighting the possibility of reducing disease susceptibility while exacerbating health inequalities.

Ruth Loos and colleagues report a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies in 181,171 individuals identifying 14 new loci associated with heart rate and test these for association with cardiac conduction, rhythm disorders and cardiovascular disease. Their experimental studies in Drosophila melanogaster and zebrafish models provide support for a role for 20 candidate genes at 11 of these loci in regulation of heart rate.

Using whole-genome data for single-nucleotide polymorphism and results from genome-wide association studies, the authors show that people’s preference for pairing with those with similar phenotypic traits has genetic causes and consequences.

Danielle Posthuma, Peter Visscher and colleagues report a meta-analysis of 17,804 traits based on virtually all twin studies from the last 50 years. For a majority of traits, twin resemblance seems solely due to additive genetic variation and lacks evidence for a substantial influence of shared environment or non-additive genetic variation.

Cecilia Lindgren and colleagues report results of a large-scale genome-wide association study for waist-to-hip ratio, a measure of body fat distribution. They identify 13 new loci associated with this trait, several of which show stronger effects in women than in men.

Alkes Price, Peter Visscher and colleagues provide recommendations on the application of mixed-linear-model association methods across a range of study designs.

A genome-wide association study and Metabochip meta-analysis of body mass index (BMI) detects 97 BMI-associated loci, of which 56 were novel, and many loci have effects on other metabolic phenotypes; pathway analyses implicate the central nervous system in obesity susceptibility and new pathways such as those related to synaptic function, energy metabolism, lipid biology and adipogenesis.

Peter Visscher and colleagues report a new method for approximate conditional and joint association analysis that makes use of summary statistics from meta-analysis of GWAS. They apply this to meta-analysis summary data for height, body mass index and type 2 diabetes.

Genome-wide association meta-analyses of waist-to-hip ratio adjusted for body mass index in more than 224,000 individuals identify 49 loci, 33 of which are new and many showing significant sexual dimorphism with a stronger effect in women; pathway analyses implicate adipogenesis, angiogenesis, transcriptional regulation and insulin resistance as processes affecting fat distribution.

A new version of nanorate DNA sequencing, with an error rate lower than five errors per billion base pairs and compatible with whole-exome and targeted capture, enables epidemiological-scale studies of somatic mutation and selection and the generation of high-resolution selection maps across coding and non-coding sites for many genes.

Silane, which is a precursor to the sandy surfaces of rocky planets and dusty clouds on gas giants, is seen directly in another world—a low-metallicity brown dwarf in which oxidation is slow and gas mixing is fast.

Here the authors perform a trans expression quantitative trait locus meta-analysis study of over 3,700 people and link a USP18 variant to expression of 50 inflammation genes and lupus risk, highlighting how genetic regulation of immune responses drives autoimmune disease and informs new therapies.

Analysis of a health insurance dataset comprising more than 44 million individuals allows for the estimation of genetic and environmental contributions in 560 phenotypes by using twins and sibling pairs.

The availability of longitudinal data in large biobanks is increasing. Here, using data from the UK Biobank, the authors develop and apply analytical approaches to quantify genetic contributions to change over time for traits like height and weight.

Disequilibrium genome-based restricted maximum likelihood (DGREML) simultaneously quantifies the contribution of SNPs and their directional covariances to trait heritability and shows that cross-autosomal correlations contribute substantially to SNP-based heritability for many complex traits.

An understanding of the genetic variants associated with medication use may shed light on the underlying biological pathways of disease, and aid in drug development. Here, Wu and colleagues conduct a GWAS for self-reported medication-use in the UK Biobank, finding more than 500 independent variants and many promising leads for future work.

Erik Ingelsson and colleagues report a large-scale genome-wide meta-analysis for associations to the extremes of anthropometric traits, including body mass index, height, waist-to-hip ratio and clinical obesity. They identify four loci newly associated with height and seven loci newly associated with clinical obesity and find overlap in the genetic structure and distribution of variants identified for these extremes of the trait distributions and for the general population.

The International Institute of Cellular and Molecular Pathology (above) was inaugurated as a centre for medical research last April. Christian de Duve (below) is president of its governing body as well as chairman of the executive committee and in those capacities he directs the activities of the ICP. The institute is already acting as a honey-pot for expatriate Belgian scientists but it is de Duve's problem to try and make the institute live up to its ‘International’ intent. Peter Newmark reports from Brussels.

This large meta-analysis of 11 GWAS identified 7 genetic loci associated with strabismus, esotropia and exotropia. Mendelian randomisation provided genetic evidence of the causal link between maternal smoking to increased strabismus risk in offspring.

Ageing increases the risk of many diseases. Here the authors compare blood cell transcriptomes of over 14,000 individuals and identify a set of about 1,500 genes that are differently expressed with age, shedding light on transcriptional programs linked to the ageing process and age-associated diseases.