ArticleEvolution; international journal of organic evolution2012
The QTN program and the alleles that matter for evolution: all that's gold does not glitter.
Article in Evolution; international journal of organic evolution, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 307 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
307 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Genomic Signatures of Selection Are Enriched in Differentially Expressed Genes in Sticklebacks Adapting to Contrasting Environments.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Cis- and trans-regulatory factors contributing to divergent activity of the TDH3 promoter in Saccharomyces yeast.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Putatively Adaptive and Genome-Wide Genetic Variation Often Rank Populations as Similarly Distinctive.Molecular ecology · 2026Article
- Divergent habitat selection across many loci maintains species boundaries during introgression.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
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- Population-scale chemical response revealed by a barcoded yeast collection.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Reply: neutral transcriptome rewiring promotes quantitative disease resistance evolvability at the species level.The Plant cell · 2026Article
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- Beyond Mendel: a call to revisit the genotype-phenotype map through new experimental paradigms.Genetics · 2026Article
- Natural variation suggests candidate genes underlying Caenorhabditis elegans susceptibility to diverse toxicants.Toxicological sciences : an official journal of the Society of Toxicology · 2026Article
- Natural variation suggests candidate genes underlyingbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Ecological stoichiometry and life history theory, not the identity of genomic variants, predict rapid adaptation.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Artificial selection for resistance to copper and off-target physiological and behavioral effects inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Genome-wide identification of QTNs and candidate genes in Ethiopian sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) moench) landraces using SNP-based approaches.BMC genomic data · 2025Article
- The genetics of extrinsic postzygotic selection in a migratory divide between subspecies of the Swainson's thrush.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Mapping of genotype-by-environment interaction loci for Metabolic Syndrome-like traits using the multi-parentbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
247 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
The search for the alleles that matter, the quantitative trait nucleotides (QTNs) that underlie heritable variation within populations and divergence among them, is a popular pursuit. But what is the question to which QTNs are the answer? Although their pursuit is often invoked as a means of addressing the molecular basis of phenotypic evolution or of estimating the roles of evolutionary forces, the QTNs that are accessible to experimentalists, QTNs of relatively large effect, may be uninformative about these issues if large-effect variants are unrepresentative of the alleles that matter. Although 20th century evolutionary biology generally viewed large-effect variants as atypical, the field has recently undergone a quiet realignment toward a view of readily discoverable large-effect alleles as the primary molecular substrates for evolution. I argue that neither theory nor data justify this realignment. Models and experimental findings covering broad swaths of evolutionary phenomena suggest that evolution often acts via large numbers of small-effect polygenes, individually undetectable. Moreover, these small-effect variants are different in kind, at the molecular level, from the large-effect alleles accessible to experimentalists. Although discoverable QTNs address some fundamental evolutionary questions, they are essentially misleading about many others.
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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.