Heritable contributions versus genetic architecture

Concept Genetic = Heritable ( Genetic = DNA )

Implicit in this, and many other writings, is the equivalence between the term “genetic” and those signals encoded by DNA sequences. How did we get to this peculiar definition of the term “genetic,” a definition that seems to be held by most contemporary evolutionary biologists (Sarkar 1998)? Here we discuss the ramifications of this definition and how it has created a false dichotomy between n...

Genetic Screening for Heritable Traits

Genetic architecture of subcortical brain regions: common and region-specific genetic contributions.

Understanding the aetiology of patterns of variation within and covariation across brain regions is key to advancing our understanding of the functional, anatomical and developmental networks of the brain. Here we applied multivariate twin modelling and principal component analysis (PCA) to investigate the genetic architecture of the size of seven subcortical regions (caudate nucleus, thalamus,...

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for heritable neoplasia.

UNLABELLED Especially applicable for heritable neoplasia, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) is possible for any Mendelian disorder whose gene has been localized, whether the molecular basis is known or not. METHODS AND RESULTS PGD requires DNA from gametes (oocytes) or embryos before 6 days postconception, when implantation occurs. Approaches include 1) polar body biopsy, 2) blastomere ...

Contributions to Genetic Algebras

Etherington introduced certain algebraic methods into the study of population genetics (6). It was noted that algebras arising in genetic systems tend to have certain abstract properties and that these can be used to give elegant proofs of some classical stability theorems in population genetics (4, 5, 9, 10). The aim of this paper is to both modernize the derivation of existing results and obt...