On Oct. 11, 2017, researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced they had  completed a detailed atlas documenting the stretches of human DNA that influence gene expression – a key way in which a person’s genome gives rise to an observable trait, like hair color or disease risk.

The atlas is the culmination of work from the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Consortium, established to catalog how genomic variation influences how genes are turned off and on.