An Australian university researcher, investigating the relationship between a person’s genes and their propensity for heart disease, has been awarded an $8 million (US$5.8million) fellowship from the Snow Medical Research Foundation. University of New South Wales (UNSW) researcher, Emily Wong PhD, intends to illuminate the relationship between the ‘dark genome’—regions of a genome that are understood less than the regions that encode proteins—and the development of the body’s heart. The genome is an organism’s complete set of genetic information and for humans, 98 percent of that information is a part of the dark genome. “I feel incredibly honoured to be a Snow Medical Fellow. This level of support is transformative. My research vision would not be possible without this level of sustained funding,” said Wong in a UNSW media release on March 2. “I’m thrilled to be able to expand this research, which has the potential to alter our understanding of heart disease …