In the United States, autoimmune diseases affect 24 million people, resulting in 100 billion dollars of direct health costs annually. Dr. Janna Saarela is Research Director at the Finnish Institute of Molecular Medicine (FIMM) in Helsinki, Finland. She discusses her use of genomics to identify pathogenic mechanisms behind common and rare immune diseases.

Food spoilage in global supply chains costs over 35 billion US dollars annually. Despite these costs, we still don't exactly know what makes food spoil. Dr. Johanna Bjorkroth is Professor of Food Hygiene and Environmental Health at the University of Helsinki. She discusses her use of genomics to identify the microbial causes of food spoilage.

The country of Finland is the largest population isolate in Europe, with a number of rare alleles enriched in the Finnish population. Dr. Hannele Laivuori and Dr. Mervi Kinnunen coordinate the Sequencing Initiative Suomi and Industry Partnership for Human Genetics projects. They discuss how Finnish genetic information is being used to help disease research.

Next generation sequencing, or NGS, has helped to fuel amazing scientific discoveries across a wide range of scientific disciplines. Dr. Vladimir Benes directs the EMBL Genomics Core Facility, and he recently sat down with us to discuss how genomics has impacted and enabled scientific research at EMBL and abroad.

Genetic variation can impact our susceptibility to developing diseases, like cancer. Dr. Jan Korbel of the EMBL discusses his search for structural variants by using an approach combining computational and laboratory methodology. He discusses his recent work to uncover enhancer hijacking events in cancer.

Microbes have been around for billions of years, and they continue to shape our planet and all life on it. Dr. Ramunas Stepanasukas of the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences explains how single-cell genomics can help us to better understand microbial diversity and microbial biology. He even discuss how single-cell genomics can help us in our exploration of other planets, like Mars.