Seventh international meeting on single nucleotide polymorphism and complex genome analysis: 'Ever bigger scans and an increasingly variable genome'

In September 2005, the seventh international meeting on single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and complex genome analysis was held in Hinckley, near Leicester, UK and the meeting was organised by Anthony Brookes, Stephen Chanock, Ivo Gut, Alec Jeffreys and Pui-Yan Kwok. Similar to prior meetings, the 3-day meeting focused on new trends and methods in the analysis of SNPs and complex human disease. A substantial portion of the meeting was devoted to preliminary analyses of data emerging from the International HapMap Consortium and addressed key issues in patterns of recombination, linkage disequilibrium and population genetics. Of great interest were the sessions that addressed SNP analysis in other species and the emerging field of copy number variation. Overall, there have been a number of recent advances in genomics that promise to accelerate the pace of dissecting the genetic basis of many complex diseases in humans - and perhaps in other species.