Contrary to the commonly held belief that humans carry two copies of each gene, the human genome actually contains many coding regions and entire genes that occur in multiple copies. These “multicopy genes” have been largely ignored by most genetic studies, in part because they are inherently very difficult to study. However, they also often vary in copy number between different people, and this copy number variation can alter genetic risks for disease. We have developed new methods to study these multicopy genes. Here, we propose to investigate how people that carry different numbers of these multicopy genes might influence their risk of getting many different diseases. Over the next 3 years, we hope to identify variation of which multicopy genes modify our disease risks, which we hope will lead to new insights a drug targets that might ultimately improve human health.
