Nature
Volume 508 Number 7497 pp432-560 24 April 2014
http://www.nature.com/nature/current_issue.html
Editorial
Take care
The United States must tread carefully when building a health-data system.
Guidelines for investigating causality of sequence variants in human disease
D. G. MacArthur, T. A. Manolio, D. P. Dimmock, H. L. Rehm, J. Shendure, G. R. Abecasis, D. R. Adams, R. B. Altman, S. E. Antonarakis, E. A. Ashley, J. C. Barrett, L. G. Biesecker, D. F. Conrad, G. M. Cooper, N. J. Cox, M. J. Daly, M. B. Gerstein, D. B. Goldstein, J. N. Hirschhorn, S. M. Leal, L. A. Pennacchio, J. A. Stamatoyannopoulos, S. R. Sunyaev, D. Valle, B. F. Voight et al.
Affiliations
The discovery of rare genetic variants is accelerating, and clear guidelines for distinguishing disease-causing sequence variants from the many potentially functional variants present in any human genome are urgently needed. Without rigorous standards we risk an acceleration of false-positive reports of causality, which would impede the translation of genomic research findings into the clinical diagnostic setting and hinder biological understanding of disease. Here we discuss the key challenges of assessing sequence variants in human disease, integrating both gene-level and variant-level support for causality. We propose guidelines for summarizing confidence in variant pathogenicity and highlight several areas that require further resource development.

Guidelines for investigating causality of sequence variants in human disease
D. G. MacArthur, T. A. Manolio, D. P. Dimmock, H. L. Rehm, J. Shendure, G. R. Abecasis, D. R. Adams, R. B. Altman, S. E. Antonarakis, E. A. Ashley, J. C. Barrett, L. G. Biesecker, D. F. Conrad, G. M. Cooper, N. J. Cox, M. J. Daly, M. B. Gerstein, D. B. Goldstein, J. N. Hirschhorn, S. M. Leal, L. A. Pennacchio, J. A. Stamatoyannopoulos, S. R. Sunyaev, D. Valle, B. F. Voight et al.
Affiliations
The discovery of rare genetic variants is accelerating, and clear guidelines for distinguishing disease-causing sequence variants from the many potentially functional variants present in any human genome are urgently needed. Without rigorous standards we risk an acceleration of false-positive reports of causality, which would impede the translation of genomic research findings into the clinical diagnostic setting and hinder biological understanding of disease. Here we discuss the key challenges of assessing sequence variants in human disease, integrating both gene-level and variant-level support for causality. We propose guidelines for summarizing confidence in variant pathogenicity and highlight several areas that require further resource development.