If there’s one genetics podcast episode to listen to this year, it’s this one.

In the final episode of The Genetics Podcast for 2022, we’re joined by Dr Veera Rajagopal, who is known as the ‘GWAS storyteller’ on Twitter for his prolific threads breaking down the latest findings in genetics.

Join Patrick and Veera as they review the most exciting stories in genetics this year, from the impact the bubonic plague has had on human evolution and our modern day lives, to looking forward and celebrating more diverse, representative populations in genetics research.

For those interested in doing further reading, Veera has kindly provided links to all the papers he references during this podcast episode, and we encourage you to follow him on Twitter @doctorveera and substack (https://gwasstories.substack.com/) for regular posts on the latest in genetics and genomics.

Links to the papers discussed in the episode:

Mind blowing genetics

Natural selection in humans at speed never seen before – black death story (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05349-x)

Hypermutated human genomes - first glimpse into the genetic and environmental factors that accelerate germline mutation rates (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04712-2)

A new monogenic cause for obesity--a structural variant that causes a skin specific gene to express in every cell of the body (https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-022-00703-9)

Milestone achievements

Remarkable moment in the human genetics—saturated GWAS of height in 5.4 million individuals (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05275-y)

Looking beyond “exomes” – first population scale WGS study in the UK Biobank—what to expect as move from exomes to genomes? (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04965-x)

Proteomics at scale—another successful industry-UKB Biobank collaboration to establish world’s largest proteomics resource (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.17.496443v1)

A step in the right direction

150,000 exomes from Mexico - first large scale exome database for a non-European population (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.06.26.495014v1)

First glimpse into the genetics of age of onset T2D in Indian population (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.14.508063v1)

Shedding more lights on the PRS barriers to non-European ancestry (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01835-x)