A 2009 study came up with a technique for predicting the height of a person based on looking at the 54 genes found to be correlated with height in 5,748 people — and discovered the results were one-tenth as accurate as the 125–year-old technique of averaging the heights of both parents and adjusting for sex.
I suspect that this issue is the central one facing genetic epidemiology. While it is possible that the approach of averaging the height of the parents includes some environmental information, it is a pretty strong comment on the predictive power of genes if that is the actual answer.
More likely, I think, is the idea that complex and important characteristics are due to many, many genes (all of which have a modest influence). The makes sense from a selection point of view (characteristics like height need to be stable) but makes the project of prediction using genes extraordinarily complicated. I don't know if there is a simple answer or not but it definitely provides some challenges for the paradigm of the classic epidemiological study.
No comments:
Post a Comment