Perspectives for vascular genomics

Diseases of the vascular system result from a complex mixture of genetic and environmental factors. Data sets, technologies and strategies emanating from the human genome programme have been applied to the analysis of both rare single-gene and common multigenic vascular disorders. Genomic approaches including inter- and intraspecies sequence comparisons, genotyping with dense marker sets spanning the genome, large-scale mutagenesis screens of model organisms, and genome-wide expression profiling have all begun to contribute to the identification of new genes and mechanisms that are central to cardiovascular disease processes.