A student who has just learned about quantitative genetics says, “Heritability estimates are worthless! They don’t tell you anything about the genes that affect a characteristic. They don’t provide any information about the types of offspring to expect from a cross. Heritability estimates measured in one population can’t be used for other populations, so they don’t even give you any general information about how much of a characteristic is genetically determined. Heritabilities don’t do anything but make undergraduate students sweat during tests.” How would you respond to this statement? Is the student correct? What good are heritabilities, and why do geneticists bother to calculate them?
Genetic Variation
Genetic variation refers to the variation in the genome sequences between individual organisms of a species. Individual differences or population differences can both be referred to as genetic variations. It is primarily caused by mutation, but other factors such as genetic drift and sexual reproduction also play a major role.
Quantitative Genetics
Quantitative genetics is the part of genetics that deals with the continuous trait, where the expression of various genes influences the phenotypes. Thus genes are expressed together to produce a trait with continuous variability. This is unlike the classical traits or qualitative traits, where each trait is controlled by the expression of a single or very few genes to produce a discontinuous variation.
A student who has just learned about quantitative genetics says,
“Heritability estimates are worthless! They don’t tell you anything
about the genes that affect a characteristic. They don’t provide any
information about the types of offspring to expect from a cross.
Heritability estimates measured in one population can’t be used for
other populations, so they don’t even give you any general
information about how much of a characteristic is genetically
determined. Heritabilities don’t do anything but make undergraduate
students sweat during tests.” How would you respond to this
statement? Is the student correct? What good are heritabilities, and
why do geneticists bother to calculate them?
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