Lab meeting March 7: challenges and prospects of quantitative trait studies

Posted by Maren Wellenreuther

For the next lab meeting, we will dive a bit deeper into the discussion that we started last week. At the last lab meeting, we read a paper by Rockman (2012) entitled ‘The QTN program and the alleles that matter for evolution: all that's gold does not glitter‘. The paper points out what has long been known (but forgotten by some): evolution often acts via large numbers of small-effect polygenes, that are on their own almost impossible to detect with the methods available to us. Thus studies are biased towards finding large-effect alleles. But are these representatives of evolution, or are they misleading about the nature of how evolutionary change comes about?

For the next EXEB lab meeting  (7^th of March, start at 13:00 in Argumentet) I suggest we read a review article by Mackay et al. (2009) with the title ‘The genetics of quantitative traits: challenges and prospects’. 

I will bring fika.