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A recent post by Megan McArdle on her Atlantic blog about the heritability of obesity prompted a discussion on ScienceBlogs about the often confused meaning of heritability. As Razib explains on Gene Expression, "Heritability is the proportion of trait variance within the population explainable by…
Willer et al. (2008). Six new loci associated with body mass index highlight a neuronal influence on body weight regulation Nature Genetics DOI: 10.1038/ng.287
Thorleifsson et al. (2008). Genome-wide association yields new sequence variants at seven loci that associate with measures of obesity…
I have been meaning to talk about this story, but I have been busy.
A study in Nature looked for genes linked with "common" obesity (more on that in a moment), and it was one of the first to link genes to the disease. Turns out several are genes expressed in the brain:
A genetic study of more than…
So on my return to regular Scienceblogging, I see that Mike the Mad Biologist and Razib are taking exception to a point made by Megan McArdle in the Atlantic. McArdle observes that the heritability of weight is quite high - almost as high as the heritability of height:
Twin studies and adoptive…