ArticleBioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology2009
What are genes "for" or where are traits "from"? What is the question?
Article in BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- A century of development.American journal of physical anthropology · 2018Review
- Understanding craniosynostosis as a growth disorder.Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Developmental biology · 2016Review
- Hand in glove: brain and skull in development and dysmorphogenesis.Acta neuropathologica · 2013Review
- Asthma-snapshot or motion picture?Frontiers in genetics · 2013Article
- Bayesian mapping of multiple traits in maize: the importance of pleiotropic effects in studying the inheritance of quantitative traits.TAG. Theoretical and applied genetics. Theoretische und angewandte Genetik · 2012Article
- Selfishness, warfare, and economics; or integration, cooperation, and biology.Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology · 2012Review
- Visualization and curve-parameter estimation strategies for efficient exploration of phenotype microarray kinetics.PloS one · 2012Article
- A computational model of teeth and the developmental origins of morphological variation.Nature · 2010Article
- Complex contributions of Ets2 to craniofacial and thymus phenotypes of trisomic "Down syndrome" mice.American journal of medical genetics. Part A · 2009Article
- Article
- The genetics of quantitative traits: challenges and prospects.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2009Review
- Tilting at quixotic trait loci (QTL): an evolutionary perspective on genetic causation.Genetics · 2008Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
For at least a century it has been known that multiple factors play a role in the development of complex traits, and yet the notion that there are genes "for" such traits, which traces back to Mendel, is still widespread. In this paper, we illustrate how the Mendelian model has tacitly encouraged the idea that we can explain complexity by reducing it to enumerable genes. By this approach many genes associated with simple as well as complex traits have been identified. But the genetic architecture of biological traits, or how they are made, remains largely unknown. In essence, this reflects the tension between reductionism as the current "modus operandi" of science, and the emerging knowledge of the nature of complex traits. Recent interest in systems biology as a unifying approach indicates a reawakened acceptance of the complexity of complex traits, though the temptation is to replace "gene for" thinking by comparably reductionistic "network for" concepts. Both approaches implicitly mix concepts of variants and invariants in genetics. Even the basic question is unclear: what does one need to know to "understand" the genetic basis of complex traits? New operational ideas about how to deal with biological complexity are needed.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.