Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, GMGM UMR 7156, F-67000 Strasbourg, France.
Université de Strasbourg, CNRS, GMGM UMR 7156, F-67000 Strasbourg, France.
Curr Opin Genet Dev. 2017 Dec;47:48-53. doi: 10.1016/j.gde.2017.08.009. Epub 2017 Sep 12.
Dissecting the genetic basis of natural phenotypic variation is a major goal in biology. We know that most traits are strongly heritable. However, their genetic architecture is a long-standing question, which is unfortunately confounded by the lack of complete knowledge of the genetic components as well as their phenotypic effect in a specific genetic background. Many genetic variants are known to affect phenotypes but the same functional variant can have a different effect on the phenotype in different individuals of the same species. Understanding the impact of genetic background on the expressivity of a given phenotype is essential because this effect complicates our ability to predict phenotype from genotype. Here, we briefly review recent progress on the exploration of the effect of genetic background and we discuss how a deeper characterization of the inheritance, expressivity and genetic interactions hidden behind the phenotypic landscape of natural variation could provide a better understanding of the relationship between genotype and phenotype.
解析自然表型变异的遗传基础是生物学的主要目标。我们知道，大多数性状具有很强的遗传性。然而，它们的遗传结构是一个长期存在的问题，不幸的是，由于缺乏对特定遗传背景下遗传成分及其表型效应的完整了解，这一问题变得更加复杂。许多遗传变异已知会影响表型，但同一功能变异在同一物种的不同个体中可能对表型有不同的影响。了解遗传背景对给定表型表达的影响至关重要，因为这种影响增加了我们根据基因型预测表型的难度。在这里，我们简要回顾了最近在探索遗传背景影响方面的进展，并讨论了如何更深入地描述自然变异表型景观背后的遗传、表达和遗传相互作用，这可以更好地理解基因型和表型之间的关系。
