Premium
The genetic architecture of psychophysiological phenotypes
Author(s) -
Munafò Marcus R.,
Flint Jonathan
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/psyp.12355
Subject(s) - genetic architecture , phenotype , genome wide association study , psychology , allele , mechanism (biology) , association (psychology) , underpinning , quantitative trait locus , genetic association , genetics , evolutionary biology , biology , gene , genotype , single nucleotide polymorphism , philosophy , civil engineering , epistemology , engineering , psychotherapist
It is now clear that almost all complex traits have a highly polygenic component; that is, their genetic basis consists of relatively frequent risk alleles at a very large number of loci, each making a small contribution to variation, or disease susceptibility. This general conclusion appears to hold for intermediate phenotypes. Therefore, we should not expect these phenotypes to be associated with substantially larger effect sizes than conventional phenotypes. Instead, their usefulness is likely to lie in understanding the mechanism underpinning associations identified via genome‐wide association studies of conventional phenotypes.