Eric Schadt's Top 5 Genomic Predictions

Eric Schadt, Ph.D., is the director of the $100 million enterprise, The Icahn Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology at Mount Sinai, and is also an expert on the generation and integration of large-scale sequence variation, molecular profiling, and clinical data in disease populations. When Mitzi Perdue, GEN’s corresponding editor, interviewed him for her article "The Schadt Equation" for our Jan. 15 issue, she asked him what major advances he expects to see from genomic research over the next five years. This is what he had to say:

1. Predictive models of disease based on DNA and other omics data achieve clinical utility and begin use in the translational arena.
2. Microbiomes in and around us shown to influence behavior.
3. Ability to predict the direction of evolution of viruses of public health concern such as influenza to aid in vaccine development and prediction of pathogenicity/virulence.
4. Derivation of DNA-based information using high-dimensional phenotypic data collected on populations of individuals.
5. Large-scale DNA sequencing data over many different vertebrate species used to map genes involved in higher-order complex traits such as consciousness and cognitive functioning (attention, memory, reasoning and so on).