heritability
razib | January 26, 2010Update: Also see p-ter at Gene Expression Classic.
Follow up on yesterday's post on the new Dickson et al. paper from David Goldstein's lab, A New Way to Look for Diseases' Genetic Roots:
The Icelandic gene-hunting firm deCODE genetics, which emerged last week from bankruptcy, has long led in detecting SNPs associated with common disease. Dr. Kari Stefansson, the company's founder and research director, agreed that whole genome sequencing would "give us a lot of extremely exciting data." But he disputed Dr. Goldstein's view that rare variants carried most of the missing heritability. Both…
razib | January 17, 2010One of the things about evolution you sometimes hear is that it has "stopped" for humans. Steve Jones, a British geneticist, is one of the more prominent public expositors of this viewpoint today. The key fact that most people latch on to is that infant and child mortality is very low, so the vast majority of humans reach the age of potential reproduction. Random genetic drift aside, evolution via natural selection does not necessarily need differential mortality as a necessary precondition (though this is obviously an efficacious mechanism from the viewpoint of evolution). All that needs to…
razib | July 30, 2009Megan McArdle has a post, Thining Thin, a follow up to America's Moral Panic Over Obesity. She says:
1. Obesity is increasing in the population, so it can't be genetic.
Well, average height is also increasing in the population. Does that mean that you could be as tall as me, if you weren't too lazy to grow?
Twin studies and adoptive studies show that the overwhelming determinant of your weight is not your willpower; it's your genes. The heritability of weight is between .75 and .85. The heritability of height is between .9 and .95. And the older you are, the more heritable weight is.…
purepedantry | April 27, 2009Razib and I have a discussion up at Bloggingheads.tv about genetics and behavior as well as a brief discussion of neuroeconomics. Check it out below the fold:
grrlscientist | December 27, 2007tags: researchblogging.org, champion racehorses, thoroughbred, genetic correlation, heritability, Equus caballus, nature versus nurture
Seattle Slew (1974-2002), the only undefeated horse to win the Triple Crown (1977).
I have been thinking about a paper that was published last week, that analyzed the effects of "nature versus nurture" on the development of a champion racehorse. In short, this paper found that the effects of a horse's pedigree is minor when compared to its environment .. the combined effects of training, diet, choice of races entered, jockey skill and of course, injuries…