The number of fingers on the human hand is completely determined by genetics – the rare deviations from 5 fingers on each hand being caused by defects of development (e.g., from thalidomide and therefore are not heritable).
Five population genetics parameters concerning genetic differentiation (Fst), recombination, linkage equilibrium (IA), nucleotide diversity, and deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) were calculated (Figure 1, Table 2).
Until last month only a hundred imprinted genes were known, and the mechanism seemed just an interesting deviation from Mendelian genetics.
The standard deviation statistics was calculated using the Global Error Model based on deviation from one (GeneSpring, Silicon Genetics).
In the context of statistical genetics, epistasis is traditionally defined as a deviation from additivity in a mathematical model summarizing the relationship between multi-locus genotypes and phenotypic variation in a population [ 3].
It is noteworthy that an effect size of one genetic standard deviation would be considered large by the standards of the genetics of complex traits (Cantor et al. 2010).
Deregressed proofs (but the same holds for daughter-yield-deviations or other estimates that more accurately reflect the genetics of an animal than a phenotypic record) are derived from a linear model including the masked and unmasked records.
Using the Exact test, deviation from Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE) was calculated using the genetics package in the statistical environment R (http://r.adu.org.za/).
Observed (HO) and expected (HE) heterozygosity and deviation from Hardy Weinberg equilibrium were calculated separately for each population using the "genetics" package in R (R Core Team 2012).
"We're very interested in what it means to be 'healthy' and finding deviations from that," said Snyder, who holds the Stanford W. Ascherman, MD, FACS Professorship in Genetics.
