Today we started covering chapter 5, on polygenic inheritance and interaction with the environment.
We discussed the differences between continuous and discontinuous characters, the definitions of polygenic, multifactorial, and complex traits, and the most common approach to studying the inheritance of continuous variation: Quantitative genetics. Quantitative genetics uses many statistical tools as well as some concepts inherent to it, like the genetic version of regression to the mean, phenotypic distribution, norm of reaction, genetic variance, phenotypic variance, and heritability.
Tomorrow: Lab 3, on Epistasis and hypothesis testing.
On Thursday: More about chapter 5.
Note:
Given the success of the end-of-class discussion on Friday, we will continue having "genetics on the news" discussions in the future, with the possibility of including questions in quizzes. I encourage you to use on-line resources to find genetics news, or let them find you. The main sources would be RSS feeds of publications like Nature, Science, or Scientific American (among MANY others), and scientific podcasts.
Some podcasts have been uploaded to the p-drive and the WebCT site (check them out!), but you can find many more on genetics-related sites. You can get them wherever you want to.
If you don't know were to begin just use iTunes (freeware, availale in Windows and Mac OS X versions) to access the iTunes store and download/subscribe to any of the FREE scientific podcasts available.
Remember, you can find the news, and with RSS feeds and podcast subscriptions the news will find you.
Examples of sites with RSS feeds:
If you find any other interesting site, let me know.
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