Charles Auffray1*, Timothy Caulfield2, Julian L. Griffin3, 4, Muin J. Khoury5, James R. Lupski6, 7 and Matthias Schwab8, 9, 10

2015 has been an exciting year for genomic medicine. We asked our Section Editors to discuss the breakthroughs in their fields of expertise, and what these might mean for the future. As in previous years, exome and whole-genome sequencing are leading the way in our understanding of disease mechanisms, their diagnosis and treatment, while information about the protein products of the genome has also grown, driven by novel technological advances. Precision medicine is now taking off as an important topic in the public health sphere and in education, and no discussion of 2015 would be complete without a mention of the huge advances in gene editing technologies, the implications of which have dominated ethics and policy debate.