Related papers: Taking Quantitative Genomics into the Wild
GWAS in humans are revealing the genetic architecture of biomedical and anthropomorphic traits, i.e., the frequencies and effect sizes of variants that contribute to heritable variation in a trait. To interpret these findings, we need to…
Whether or not biodiversity dynamics tend toward stable equilibria remains an unsolved question in ecology and evolution with important implications for our understanding of diversity and its conservation. Phylo/population genetic models…
Predicting the adaptation of populations to a changing environment is crucial to assess the impact of human activities on biodiversity. Many theoretical studies have tackled this issue by modeling the evolution of quantitative traits…
Identifying drivers of complex traits from the noisy signals of genetic variation obtained from high throughput genome sequencing technologies is a central challenge faced by human geneticists today. We hypothesize that the variants…
To learn about the past from a sample of genomic sequences, one needs to understand how evolutionary processes shape genetic diversity. Most population genetic inference is based on frameworks assuming adaptive evolution is rare. But if…
The observation that phenotypic variability is ubiquitous in isogenic populations has led to a multitude of experimental and theoretical studies seeking to probe the causes and consequences of this variability. Whether it be in the context…
Genetic studies of human traits have revolutionized our understanding of the variation between individuals, and opened the door for numerous breakthroughs in biology, medicine and other scientific fields. And yet, the ultimate promise of…
In this the first of an anticipated four paper series, fundamental results of quantitative genetics are presented from a first principles approach. While none of these results are in any sense new, they are presented in extended detail to…
Modelling the evolution of a continuous trait in a biological population is one of the oldest problems in evolutionary biology, which led to the birth of quantitative genetics. With the recent development of GWAS methods, it has become…
In the field of evolutionary robotics, choosing the correct encoding is very complicated, especially when robots evolve both behaviours and morphologies at the same time. With the objective of improving our understanding of the mapping…
Pathogens drive changes in host immune systems that in turn exert pressure for pathogens to evolve. Quantifying and understanding this constant coevolutionary process has clear practical global health implications. Yet its relatively easier…
Geographic ranges of communities of species evolve in response to environmental, ecological, and evolutionary forces. Understanding the effects of these forces on species' range dynamics is a major goal of spatial ecology. Previous…
The origin of diversification and coexistence of genes and species have been traditionally studied in isolated biological levels. Ecological and evolutionary views have focused on the mechanisms that enable or constrain species coexistence,…
In the classic view introduced by R. A. Fisher, a quantitative trait is encoded by many loci with small, additive effects. Recent advances in QTL mapping have begun to elucidate the genetic architectures underlying vast numbers of…
The advent of plant phenomics, coupled with the wealth of genotypic data generated by next-generation sequencing technologies, provides exciting new resources for investigations into and improvement of complex traits. However, these new…
The distribution and heritability of many traits depends on numerous loci in the genome. In general, the astronomical number of possible genotypes makes the system with large numbers of loci difficult to describe. Multilocus evolution,…
Machine learning and deep learning have been celebrating many successes in the application to biological problems, especially in the domain of protein folding. Another equally complex and important question has received relatively little…
Our quantitative understanding of how scientists choose and shift their research focus over time is highly consequential, because it affects the ways in which scientists are trained, science is funded, knowledge is organized and discovered,…
Meiotic recombination is a fundamental feature of sexually reproducing species. It is often required for proper chromosome segregation and plays important role in adaptation and the maintenance of genetic diversity. The molecular mechanisms…
A major aim of evolutionary biology is to explain the respective roles of adaptive versus non-adaptive changes in the evolution of complexity. While selection is certainly responsible for the spread and maintenance of complex phenotypes,…