Symposium on COMPLEX TRAIT GENETICS

The inheritance of most phenotypes is not governed by simple Mendelian rules. Even a simple quantitative trait such as human height is influenced by more than 400 genes, each of which contributes only a small part to the heritability. Modern quantitative trait genetic provides insights that classical knockout studies of genes can not reveal. The particulate view of inheritance needs to be complemented by a statistical view. This has major implications for unterstanding the phenotypes of individuals, for human health and for animal and plant breeding. We are at the dawn of a fundamentally revised view of genetics.