def get_features(hfile, group):
    """
    Returns the list of featureId, featureName tuples from the hfile used for
    populating the Features table and for parallelizing the task of loading
    samples.

    :param hfile:
    :param group:
    :return: list of (featureId, featureName) tuplies
    """
    genes = hfile[group + "/genes"]
    gene_names = hfile[group + "/gene_names"]
    return zip(genes, gene_names)