Epistasis and Quantitative Traits: Using Model Organisms to Study Gene-Gene Interactions
By T. Mackay. Nature reviews genetics, 2013
785 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The role of epistasis in the genetic architecture of quantitative traits is controversial, despite the biological plausibility that nonlinear molecular interactions underpin the genotype–phenotype map. This controversy arises because most genetic variation for quantitative traits is additive. However, additive variance is consistent with pervasive epistasis. In this Review, I discuss experimental designs to detect the contribution of epistasis to quantitative trait phenotypes in model organisms. These studies indicate that epistasis is common, and that additivity can be an emergent property of underlying genetic interaction networks. Epistasis causes hidden quantitative genetic variation in natural populations and could be responsible for the small additive effects, missing heritability and the lack of replication that are typically observed for human complex traits.
Subfields: Genetics, Molecular Biology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6025e53713561142d431e2ae59c2c6096302c9d0
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In Genetics
- Frank Dudbridge
- Naomi R. Wray
- Sang Hong Lee
- A. Vinkhuyzen
- C. Middeldorp
- D. Mehta
- Trevor M. Faske
- A. Eckert
In Molecular Biology
Citations in the corpus
- The genomics of local adaptation in trees: are we out of the woods yet? (2017, background): “…to the distinction of the different forms of dominance and epistasis (Cheverud & Routman 1995; Hansen & Wagner 2001; Hermisson et al. 2003; Hansen 2006; Mackay 2014) nor towards the inference of aspects of the underlying genetic architecture in general (Nelson et al. 2013; Huang & Mackay 2016).”
- Research review: Polygenic methods and their application to psychiatric traits. (2014, background): “Others have argued that the contribution from nonadditive genetic variance to complex traits is likely limited (Hill, Goddard, & Visscher, 2008; Stringer, Derks, Kahn, Hill, & Wray, 2013) and that presence of important epistasis and small epistatic variance are not inconsistent (Mackay, 2014).”