Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Quantitative
genetics
Estimating broad
(H2)and narrow sense
(h2)heritabilities
(1)Problems for
next week are on the
Moodle site
A!
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
Additive effects at
some or all loci
B
coding for
enzymes A-G
C!
where there are:
Partial loss of function
D!
mutations
or, enzyme over
D !
expression,
or some net expression
of a pathway - a
F!
character variant
in a population
G!
and
Environmental effects
(temperature,
nutrients, ph) on
the rate of pigment
production
Broad sense heritability (H2) indicates the influence (%) of inherited variation,
variation transmitted from parents to offspring,
variation segregating in a population sharing a defined environment.
Broad-sense heritability (H2) measures what proportion of phenotype ( a
character e.g. height) variation is due to differences in genotype (all sources of
transmitted genetic variance: (1) ancestry; (2)number and kind of interacting genes
and ; (3) for each of these, the effects of different alleles, of substituting alleles one for
another )
Variance Components
V = variance: variances
are squared, so they may
be added (s2 or 2).
VG - genetic variance
VE - environmental
variance
VP - phenotypic variance
VG
VG
H =
=
(VG + VE ) (VP )
2
There are 2 pure-breeding varieties or strains of
wheat that a farmer wants to cross, trying to breed a
mid-sized strain of grain with low size variation.
Broad sense heritability H2 ?
Generation
Mean
Phenotypic
height (in)
variance
(in height)
P1 Ramona
Strain
13.0
11.0
P2 Baart
Strain
27.6
10.0
F1
18.5
5.0
F2
21.2
40.0
VE=
VP=
VG= (VP - VE)=
H2 =
Method 2
Expected and observed H2, based on familial relationships:
There is an expected positive genetic correlation among individuals in
a family (relatives) due to their (high) proportion of shared alleles
(100%, 50%, 25% etc.).
TRC is one of several fingerprint characters.
Different kinds of twin and other familial studies find that IQ heritability estimates
center on 0.75 (Nessier et al. 1996. American Psychologist 51: 77 - 101), although the
range is from 0.4 to 0.9. This suggests that variation due to environmental differences
(education) has less influence on IQ than inheritance.
The problem with this argument is the progressive gains in IQ scores, about 6 IQ points
per decade (Flynn, J.R. 1999 Am. Psychologist 54 5-20). How would you explain this ?
VG
VG
H =
=
(VG + VE ) (VP )
2
VA
h =
VE + (VA + VEp + VGxE + VD )
2