What genes tell us about the pathogenesis of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Recently a series of genome-wide association study manuscripts in asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease have been published. These papers suggest that, in part, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease have a common genetic origin, and that this common origin is due to polymorphism in genes that are involved with the development of the lung. This Pulmonary Perspective discusses what we are learning from genome-wide association studies, where the field of genetics and genomics is headed, and how this knowledge will ultimately be put to use in clinical medicine.