epistatic variation

Gerke J, Lorenz K, Ramnarine S & Cohen B 2010 Gene-environment interactions at nucleotide resolution. PLoS Genet 6:e1001144.

• variation in sporulation efficiency is shaped largely by genetic and environmental interactions
• we find clear examples of QTN:environment, QTN:background, and environment:background interactions
• we find no QTN:QTN interactions that occur consistently across the entire dataset
• interactions between QTN only occur under specific combinations of environment and genetic background
• what might appear to be a QTN:QTN interaction in one background and environment becomes a more complex QTN:QTN:environment:background interaction when we consider the entire dataset as a whole
• the phenotypic impact of a set of QTN alleles cannot be predicted from genotype alone