Imaging genetics and the music of life

Today, very diverse researches are being conducted in genetics with many different aims. We prefer to give a vision rather than a rationale.

Living organisms are the result of masterful interpretations of their genome by the environment composed of other organims and nature. Like these sublime symphonies identifiable from the first bars, individuals resemble perfectly each other but they show very tiny variations that makes them like different performances of a masterpiece. These performances are sensitive to so many things, the amplitude of the conductor gestures, the annotations on the score, or even the mood of the percussionist…

Humans, like symphonies, present subtle variations : these are the traits or phenotypes. These are interesting because they can be studied and their diversity can be tentatively correlated to environment conditions or genome variants. Genetics aims to study variants in the genome whose variations correlate with variable traits. In neuroimaging genetics, we scrutinize the anatomical or functional organization of the human brain as fantastic phenotypes.

Imaging genetics is one way to listen to the symphonies of life being performed, as close as possible to the conductors.

See also “The Music of Life, Biology beyond the genome” OUP and “La musique de la vie au delà du génome” Seuil by Denis Noble