Question: If you were to focus on a more specific genetic field, what would you be most interested in?

Michael Schubert answered on 28 Nov 2023:

If I were to choose just one area of genetics to work in, I think I would study functional genomics, possibly with some structural elements. I’d like to work out how mutations in the genetic sequence change the structure of the gene or the protein it produces and how that potentially causes disease. There are many rare disorders that we know are genetic, but don’t know the actual causative gene or mutation – I’d like to work out what some of those “variants of uncertain significance” are doing and which ones cause problems. Diseases like cancer have a lot of research attention, so I’d like to work on genes that affect human health, but don’t get as much attention.