A first map of gene-gene interactions in the human cell. Credit: Chad Myers, University of Minnesota

How do our genes determine our appearance and our susceptibility to disease? This question is central to biomedical research, and today we can sequence thousands of human genomes to identify these genes. However, genes work in complex networks.

Building a global interaction map

In a major transdisciplinary collaboration, an international team of geneticists and bioinformaticians set out to create a so-called genetic interaction (GI) map of a human cell. With significant contributions from the Canadian Donnelly Center, the University of Minnesota, the Hospital for Sick Children in Canada, the University Hospital Bonn, and the University of Bonn, a first draft has been published in Cell .

This draft is titled "A global genetic interaction network of a human cell maps conserved principles and informs functional interpretation of gene co-essentiality profiles."

Most genes in the genome can be removed without…