Dunedin gets insight into DNA advances

Assistant Prof Daniel MacArthur, of the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in the United States, speaks at the University of Otago last night on the way advances in genomics have made it possible to examine the DNA of tens of thousands of people, providing "an unprecedented view of the landscape of human genetic diversity''.

Prof MacArthur described the way "massive scale resources of human genetic data'' were being used to improve the diagnosis of patients with rare diseases.