The impact of gene-environment interaction and correlation on the interpretation of heritability.

The presence of gene-environment statistical interaction (GxE) and correlation (rGE) in biological development has led both practitioners and philosophers of science to question the legitimacy of heritability estimates. The paper offers a novel approach to assess the impact of GxE and rGE on the way genetic and environmental causation can be partitioned. A probabilistic framework is developed, based on a quantitative genetic model that incorporates GxE and rGE, offering a rigorous way of interpreting heritability estimates. Specifically, given an estimate of heritability and the variance components associated with estimates of GxE and rGE, I arrive at a probabilistic account of the relative effect of genes and environment.