Saturday, March 3, 2012

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  (7th 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.


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