Category Archives: association genetics

When and how to "go for the genes"

Posted on 29 Jul, 2015 by Rob Denton

A new special issue of Molecular Ecology, entitled “Detecting selection in natural populations: making sense of genome scans and towards alternative solutions”, is coming down the line, and a few articles from that issue are starting to appear as newly-accepted. Seeing those … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, association genetics, Molecular Ecology, the journal | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

A molecular how-to for hibernating this winter

Posted on 17 Dec, 2014 by Rob Denton

As the academic semester ends, I see the tell-tale signs of the upcoming holiday hibernation. The weary eyes of teaching assistants peeking over piles of final exams. Students who may have mentally been on break before finals even started. A little … Continue reading →

Posted in association genetics, Molecular Ecology, the journal, quantitative genetics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

From cats to rats: two studies on domestication and tameness

Posted on 18 Nov, 2014 by Noah Snyder-Mackler

Anyone who has ever read Charles Darwin is acutely aware of his fascination with domestication – particularly how he fancied fancy pigeons. Darwin drew on his domestication obsession while writing his book, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, association genetics, domestication, genomics, methods, next generation sequencing, phylogenetics, quantitative genetics | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

How many markers does it take to make a dataset "genomic"?

Posted on 9 Oct, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

A new paper in Ecology Letters by Matthew Fitzpatrick and Stephen Keller proposes to use some a class of statistical methods developed for understanding the distribution of species in different environments to understand the distribution of genetic variants in different … Continue reading →

Posted in association genetics, genomics, next generation sequencing, population genetics, software | 7 Comments

Fishing for genetic signals of adaptation

Posted on 17 Sep, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

One of the biggest promises of modern DNA sequencing methods is the ability to track the adaptation of living populations at a fine genetic scale, in essentially real time. It’s already been done in a number of experimental evolution systems: … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, association genetics, genomics | Tagged | 1 Comment

Scanning the genome for local adaptation

Posted on 23 Apr, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

One of the most obvious and important applications of evolutionary genetics is in figuring out whether natural biological communities are going to be able to adapt to global climate change. The projected rate of climate change over then next century … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, association genetics, genomics, next generation sequencing | Tagged , , | 9 Comments

On “triangulation” in genome scans

Posted on 4 Feb, 2014 by Jeremy Yoder

Guest contributor K.E. Lotterhos is a marine biologist at Wake Forest University, who studies evolutionary responses to fishing and climate change. You can find her on Twitter under the handle @dr_k_lo. A major goal of evolutionary biology is to understand the genetic … Continue reading →

Posted in adaptation, association genetics, genomics, methods, population genetics, quantitative genetics | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

Why genetic tests are different

Posted on 31 Dec, 2013 by Jeremy Yoder

In yesterday’s New York Times, Kira Peikoff reported what happened when she took genetic tests for disease risks from three different providers—she got three very different results. 23andMe said my most elevated risks — about double the average — were … Continue reading →

Posted in association genetics, medicine, methods | 5 Comments