Related papers: The gene's-eye view of quantitative genetics
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,…
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…
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…
Selection, mutation and random drift affect the dynamics of allele frequencies and consequently of quantitative traits. While the macroscopic dynamics of quantitative traits can be measured, the underlying allele frequencies are typically…
Studies of the genetic loci that contribute to variation in gene expression frequently identify loci with broad effect on gene expression: expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) hotspots. We describe a set of exploratory graphical…
Adaptation in response to selection on polygenic phenotypes may occur via subtle allele frequencies shifts at many loci. Current population genomic techniques are not well posed to identify such signals. In the past decade, detailed…
A key goal in studies of ecology and evolution is understanding the causes of phenotypic diversity in nature. Most traits of interest, such as those relating to morphology, life-history, immunity and behaviour are quantitative, and…
To understand the effect of assortative mating on the genetic evolution of a population, we consider a finite population in which each individual has a type, determined by a sequence of n diallelic loci. We assume that the population…
Molecular traits, such as gene expression levels or protein binding affinities, are increasingly accessible to quantitative measurement by modern high-throughput techniques. Such traits measure molecular functions and, from an evolutionary…
How do genes affect cognitive ability or other human quantitative traits such as height or disease risk? Progress on this challenging question is likely to be significant in the near future. I begin with a brief review of psychometric…
Genetic diversity is central to the process of evolution. Both natural selection and random genetic drift are influenced by the level of genetic diversity of a population; selection acts on diversity while drift samples from it. At a given…
Numerous traits under migration-selection balance are shown to exhibit complex patterns of genetic architecture with large variance in effect sizes. However, the conditions under which such genetic architectures are stable have yet to be…
Evolution has fascinated quantitative and physical scientists for decades: how can the random process of mutation, recombination, and duplication of genetic information generate the diversity of life? What determines the rate of evolution?…
Molecular phenotypes link genomic information with organismic functions, fitness, and evolution. Quantitative traits are complex phenotypes that depend on multiple genomic loci. In this paper, we study the adaptive evolution of a…
We consider resequencing studies of associated loci and the problem of prioritizing sequence variants for functional follow-up. Working within the multivariate linear regression framework helps us to account for correlation across variants,…
We consider the evolution of populations under the joint action of mutation and differential reproduction, or selection. The population is modelled as a finite-type Markov branching process in continuous time, and the associated…
Molecular phenotypes are important links between genomic information and organismic functions, fitness, and evolution. Complex phenotypes, which are also called quantitative traits, often depend on multiple genomic loci. Their evolution…
A historical dispute in the conceptual underpinnings of evolution is the validity of the gene centered view of evolution. \cite{dawkins,lewontin} We transcend this debate by formalizing the gene centered view as a dynamic version of the…
We introduce a multi-allele Wright-Fisher model with non-recurrent, reversible mutation and directional selection. In this setting, the allele frequencies at a single locus track the path of a hybrid jump-diffusion process with state space…
An expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) is a chromosomal region where genetic variants are associated with the expression levels of certain genes that can be both nearby or distant. The identifications of eQTLs for different tissues,…