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Next‐generation QTL mapping: crowdsourcing SNP s, without pedigrees
Author(s) -
Edwards Scott V.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
molecular ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.619
H-Index - 225
eISSN - 1365-294X
pISSN - 0962-1083
DOI - 10.1111/mec.12401
Subject(s) - biology , variation (astronomy) , genetic architecture , evolutionary biology , genomics , population , population genomics , quantitative trait locus , natural selection , phenotypic trait , genetics , gene , phenotype , genome , sociology , astrophysics , physics , demography
For many molecular ecologists, the mantra and mission of the field of ecological genomics could be encapsulated by the phrase ‘to find the genes that matter’ (Mitchell‐Olds [Mitchell‐Olds T, 2001]; Rockman [Rockman MV, 2012]). This phrase of course refers to the early hope and current increasing success in the search for genes whose variation underlies phenotypic variation and fitness in natural populations. In the years since the modern incarnation of the field of ecological genomics, many would agree that the low‐hanging fruit has, at least in principle, been plucked: we now have several elegant examples of genes whose variation influences key adaptive traits in natural populations, and these examples have revealed important insights into the architecture of adaptive variation (Hoekstra et al . [Hoekstra HE, 2006]; Shapiro et al . [Shapiro MD, 2009]; Chan et al . [Chan YF, 2010]). But how well will these early examples, often involving single genes of large effect on discrete or near‐discrete phenotypes, represent the dynamics of adaptive change for the totality of phenotypes in nature? Will traits exhibiting continuous rather than discrete variation in natural populations have as simple a genetic basis as these early examples suggest (Prasad et al . [Prasad KVSK, 2012]; Rockman [Rockman MV, 2012])? Two papers in this issue (Robinson et al . [Robinson MR, 2013]; Santure et al . [Santure AW, 2013]) not only suggest answers to these questions but also provide useful extensions of statistical approaches for ecological geneticists to study the genetics of continuous variation in nature. Together these papers, by the same research groups studying evolution in a natural population of G reat T its ( P arus major ), provide a glimpse of what we should expect as the field begins to dissect the genetic basis of what is arguably the most common type of variation in nature, and how genome‐wide surveys of variation can be applied to natural populations without pedigrees.