genetic architecture

Hill WG 2010 Understanding and using quantitative genetic variation. Phil Trans R Soc Lond B 365:73-85.

• perhaps human height is exceptional
• it has a very high heritability and near additivity of variance
• recent association studies on other traits are, however, also revealing many regions of the genome associated with disease risk

• in view of geneticists' success in unravelling the control of developmental pattern, it would seem straightforward to figure out how the overall size of the organism is controlled
• one can see a role for systems biology
• but I am pessimistic about the rate at which the systems will be disentangled
• understanding models for connecting tens of interacting genes may be feasible
• but not for 1000
• I do not believe the essentially statistical approach, enhanced by the use of genomic information to mark genomic regions, is on its last legs