The 2016 scientific meeting of the Human Genome Variation Society (HGVS; http://www.hgvs.org) was held on the 20th of May in Barcelona, Spain, with the theme of “Clinical Interpretation of Variants from Next-Generation Sequencing".

There is now a convergence of two modes of genetic testing, that of testing a few candidate genes at a time based on suspicion of a specific genetic disease, and that of genomic testing, especially when a candidate gene(s) is not suspected or known. Both aim to interpret pathogenicity of identified genetic …