Most of these molecular changes are acquired, not inherited, as only a small number of leukaemias are associated with inherited genetic syndromes as is the case for germline mutations in PAX5 (Auer et al., 2014; Martin-Lorenzo et al., 2018), ETV6 (Moriyama et al., 2015; Noetzli et al., 2015) or IKZF1 (Churchman et al., 2018). The gene discussed is ETV6; the disease is leukemia.