A Genetics Concept Map for Teaching

For learners. Everything here is for teaching, learning, and exploration. The associations are educational reference data; they do not diagnose, produce no risk number, and say nothing about any real person. The Related concepts panel carries an educational-use banner by default.

What "concept map" means here

The map is the correlation graph — a catalogue of curated associations, plus genetic links derived from the marker catalogue — surfaced as a navigable explorer rather than a static diagram. Pick any concept and the explorer shows what it connects to, grouped by the recorded item and labelled with the kind of association (a biomarker, a shared gene, an associated condition, a shared feature). The learner walks from node to node, reading a short neutral note at each edge. It spans five kinds of entity and reaches across a 230+ disease catalogue sitting within the wider 1,900+ help-catalogue of guides.

Three things it teaches well

1. Pleiotropy — one gene, many phenotypes

Start from a gene in the "explore any concept" search and read off everything it links to. BRCA2 reaches breast, ovarian, and pancreatic cancer; PTEN reaches breast, endometrial, and thyroid cancer and Cowden syndrome; MITF links a disease (melanoma) and a trait (eye colour); GBA links a recessive storage disease (Gaucher) to a neurodegenerative association (familial Parkinson's). One search makes the one-gene-many-outcomes idea concrete. See gene and shared-gene associations for the full mechanism.

2. Reading a laboratory panel

Record a test result and mark it low or high, and the explorer shows what that direction is associated with. A low ferritin points toward iron-deficiency anaemia; a high ferritin points toward hereditary haemochromatosis; a low MCV sits across both iron-deficiency anaemia and beta thalassaemia. It is a clean way to teach why direction matters and why one number rarely settles a differential. The biomarker and condition associations page works the iron studies through in full.

3. Associated conditions and shared features

Beyond genes and labs, the curated edges teach how conditions cluster — which conditions are recognised as associated, which share overlapping features, and which can follow on from another as a sequela. Reading these encourages learners to think in systems rather than memorising isolated facts.

Using it in class

Live demonstration. Draw a quick teaching pedigree, annotate an individual, and open the Related concepts panel to show the connections light up per recorded item.
Worksheets. Give students a starting concept and ask them to map out three associations and explain each in their own words from the notes.
Self-study. The "explore any concept" search needs no pedigree at all — students can browse associations for any catalogue entity directly.
Embedded. The pedigree canvas can be embedded in a course page or LMS so learners draw and annotate without leaving your materials.

Because nothing is ticked by inference, the explorer is a prompt for thinking, not an answer key: it offers associations, and the student decides which to record and why.

Boundaries

The concept map is an educational aid. It does not diagnose and asserts nothing about any real individual; worked examples should use fictional or anonymised people.
It produces no risk number and makes no screening, referral, or treatment recommendation.
Evagene is an academic, research, and educational pedigree modelling platform — not a medical device, not clinical decision support, and not a diagnostic or screening tool.