Lab 05 - Heritability

In today's lab we focused in calculating heritability, the proportion of phenotypic variance explained by genetic differences.

We covered two approaches to calculating heritability:

1. Broad sense heritability: It reflects all possible genetic contributions to a population's phenotypic variance like effects due to allelic variation (additive variance), dominance, or polygenic interactions, as well as matrenal and paternal effects.
2. Narrow sense heritability: It quantifies the proportion of phenotypic variation explained by allelic variation.

We calculated broad sense heritability with data collected from student's fingerprints, specifically total ridge count. And narrow sense heritability will be calculated based on students' heights in inches, as well as the heights of their siblings, parents, and parents siblings.

The heritability challenge (Thursday):

During the exercise I made a mistake when calculating broad sense heritability. Apparently no body caught it. If you can find the mistake and explain the whole exercise correctly to the rest of the class, you will have the chance to earn 5 bonus points. Be prepared, and among those who have the answer I will randomly chose some one to try to get the bonus points.

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