Editorial

Ikediobi and colleagues have characterised the population frequencies of clinically relevant phar-macogenetic traits in two distinct South African population groups residing in the Western Cape (the Xhosa and Cape Mixed Ancestry). Their data indicate diverse allele frequencies of key pharmaco-genetic genes within the African population. In the Update on Gene Completions and Annotations section, Jackson et al. provide an update on aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) genes in several vertebrates and clarify the annotation found in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) gene database. They also discuss gene-duplication and gene-loss events that may have occurred in the ALDH gene superfamily. In the Software Review section of the current issue, Lamy and colleagues discuss software for the genotyping of microarray single nucleotide polymorphisms, in particular software for Affymetrix and Illumina arrays. In Genome Databases, Jassal reviews the new version of the Reactome database and uses it to analyse the solute carrier (SLC) class of transporters. His study and the Reactome provide a basis for a number of analyses, which includes interactions, expression data, over-representation analysis and species comparison. Such analyses may provide the basis for further investigations using systems biology.Finally, Dan Nebert reviews the book, Designer Genes: A New Era in the Evolution of Man by Stephen Potter (Random House; 2010).