#REVEAL BLUE IRIS KEY DRIVERS#

Genetics should be part of the armamentarium of every practicing ophthalmologist. Genetics is relevant, not just for Inherited Retinal Diseases and congenital abnormalities but also forВ the leading causes of blindness: age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma, myopia, diabetic retinopathy and cataract. As the explosion of data from genomics, big data and artificial intelligence transforms medicine, ophthalmologists need to be genetically literate.

These themes in popular culture can be leveraged as tools to teach and engage everyone in genetics, which is now a key component in all eye diseases. Television shows such as Game of Thrones focused attention on the eye colour of characters, as well as their Dire-wolves and Dragons. Beyond genetics, colour perception touches on concepts involving optics, physics, physiology and psychology and can capture the imagination of the population, as we saw with social media trend of вЂњ#the dressвЂќ.

#REVEAL BLUE IRIS KEY DRIVERS#

Eye colour and colour perception are excellent examples to use when teaching genetics as they encompass not simply the basic Mendelian genetics of dominant, recessive and X-linked disorders, but also many of the new concepts such as non-allelic diseases, polygenic disease, phenocopies, genome-wide association study (GWAS), founder effects, gene-environment interaction, evolutionary drivers for variations, copy number variation, insertions deletions, methylation and gene inactivation.

Reveal blue iris key