Month: September 2022

THE RED HERRING. "For long some geneticists may have thought that they were dissecting the morphogenetic mechanisms underlying the formation of phenotypic traits, while their experimental approach were in fact uncovering genes whose absence or alteration (mutations, deletions, duplications, rearrangements, etc.) leads to phenotypic differences." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

BIOLOGICAL RELATIVITY. "Misconceptions arise because phenotypes are usually defined relative to possibilities that are not formulated explicitly. Our minds and our language often tend to confuse the objects whose variation is under consideration with the variation itself, and it is essential to remind that, in genetics, the objects of interest (e.g., a given genotype, an allele or a phenotype) deserve to be defined relatively to another reference state." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

REDUCTIONISM LIMITATIONS. "In summary, the classical genetic reductionist approach is inherently unable to elucidate all the factors responsible for observable characteristics in the living world but is a powerful and relevant method for dissecting the genetic levers of heritable phenotypic variation." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

CONTEXTUAL EFFECTS. "Gene-by-Environment (GxE) interaction occurs when the phenotypic effect of a given genetic change depends on environmental parameters. Similarly, epistasis, or GxG interaction, occurs when the phenotypic effect of a given genetic change depends on the allelic state of at least one other locus." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

RADICAL THINKING. "A major discovery of the past 20 years is that variation at certain genetic loci produce comparable phenotypic variation not only in various individuals of one population, but also in extremely diverse taxa." Contemplate this apparent radical heresy before moving on. https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

ALL-IMPORTANT CONTEXT. "In other words, certain GP relationships are taxonomically robust and present across a large range of species. As underlined by multiple authors, genes and environment act jointly on the phenotype, and in most cases it is impossible to disentangle the effect of one from the other." (GP = genotype-phenotype relationship). https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

BIG SURPRISE. "This implies that the genetic and environmental backgrounds have remained relatively constant or have appeared repeatedly throughout evolution to allow for genetic loci to generate similar phenotypic changes in various taxonomic groups. This important finding was quite unsuspected some 50 years ago." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

HUNDREDS OF BIG SURPRISES. "A more dramatic example is the recent evolution of a toxin resistance in three species that diverged more than 500 million years ago – a clam, a snake and a pufferfish – via the same amino acid substitution in a conserved gene. Such striking patterns of genetic repetition have now been found for more than 100 genes in animals and plants." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

CONSEQUENCES OF SURPRISES. "Nowadays, one should not be surprised that a piece of DNA associated with a complex wing color pattern in one Heliconius butterfly species provides similar wings and collective protection from the same predators when introduced into the genome of other butterflies." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn

CONSEQUENCES OF SURPRISES. "Nowadays, one should not be surprised that a piece of DNA associated with a complex wing color pattern in one Heliconius butterfly species provides similar wings and collective protection from the same predators when introduced into the genome of other butterflies." https://lnkd.in/d3vzXnd View in LinkedIn