Topic summary
Genetic susceptibility
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Public health genomics.
Genetic susceptibility to disease
Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are single bases within a gene sequence that differ from that gene's consensus sequence, and are present in a subset of the population. SNPs may have no effect on gene expression, or they can change the function of a gene completely. Resulting gene expression changes can, in some cases, result in disease, or in susceptibility to disease (e.g., viral or bacterial infection).