Cover illustration by Roberto Torres (www.torresdecomunicacion.com) has been selected for the January 2011 issue of Genome Research, in which our paper "Adaptive selection of an incretin gene in Eurasian population" will appear. The design included several key components of ideas reflected in the paper, including the change of allele frequency of mutation, the out-of-Africa hypothesis, emergency of agriculture, local adaptation, and population differentiation. We specially thank pepi and roberto for the effort on interpreting and rendering.