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I'm sceptical of those SNPs linked with baldness etc. SNPs don't cause phenotypes, they're associated with them. The guy has been dead for ~5000 years, but the
by a_bonobo 3y ago
I'm sceptical of those SNPs linked with baldness etc. SNPs don't cause phenotypes, they're associated with them.
The guy has been dead for ~5000 years, but they're looking at SNPs linked with these phenotypes today; surely over 5000 years not all of those associations remain.
- abstractbeliefs 3y agoSure, but on the other hand, he was bald. I would consider that a strong indication at least that the authors aren't talking completely out their asses.
- pierat 3y ago5000 years at 50y/human is only 100 lifetimes back. That really isn't that far.
- semiquaver 3y agoMore like 250 generations though.
- pfisherman 3y agoI wonder if that is long enough to significantly impact LD structure.
- pfisherman 3y agoSNPs are causal in that they can be thought of as perturbations of genes that occur prior to the genesis of the phenotype. I think what you might be trying to say is (1) the presence of a SNP may not be sufficient for the occurrence of a phenotype, or (2) another SNP in high LD may be the true causal SNP.
- astrange 3y agoGenetics is remarkably lax about correlation != causation, maybe because they can't do experiments. This leads online amateurs to have a lot of overly confident opinions they got from eg twin studies, which are not nearly as reliable as they think. Imagine the kind of inaccurate results you'd get by comparing two versions of your code with GWAS instead of reading the commit history.
- niemandhier 3y agoGenetics does experiments all the time, and many of them are geared towards understanding causality. Knock-Out studies are all about determining the consequences of a genome change.
- dillydogg 3y agoThey are probably talking about population genetics, which doesn't really allow for experiments