The cover of the March issue of the journal Genomics features a study by Brown and Women & Infants researcher Jim Padbury and co-authors who looked at the genes associated with pre-term birth. In the United States one in eight women give birth pre-term, and researchers aren’t sure why. Informed by a systematic search of the scientific literature, the team then combed through genomic data from nearly 2,000 pre-term and regular term mothers. They identified 19 genetic pathways and networks of interest, encompassing 53 different genes. Their next step is doing deep sequencing of the significantly associated genomic regions in the Brown Genomics Core.