User talk:Smoe

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-Poli (talk • contribs) 21:03, 2005 July 26 (UTC)

[edit] Quantitative trait gene: suggested merge

Hi, you seem to be the only other editor of quantitative trait gene. I suggested it be merged with Quantitative trait locus, which is a more commonly used term for the same thing. Let me know what you think on the talk page, otherwise expect me to do the merge within the next few days. Cheers, - Samsara contrib talk 12:44, 11 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment on my talk, and sorry to take so long to get back. I mean, yes, "gene" could imply that the transcript, translation product and function are known; on the other hand, "gene" does also refer to a physical location on the chromosome, which is a locus. As you know, a locus is as small or large as you want it to be, even a single nucleotide, which is what QTL ultimately usually map to, unless you're dealing with an unusually polymorphic population, e.g. balancing selection (which is unlikely for a quantitative trait, where each locus/gene has a small effect).
Now, suppose that to the resolution of your QTL mapping, you had found a candidate region that actually harbours more than one gene containing a polymorphism relevant to the expression of the trait. In this case, I doubt you would be very interested in disentangling the effects, because it is likely that on your timescale of interest, the various QTG segregated together! So unless you were interested in studying the details of the underlying metabolism, or in eugenic manipulation, the difference between a QTG and candidate region containing several QTG would be fairly irrelevant.
Does that make a stronger case for merging? - Samsara contrib talk 03:33, 1 March 2006 (UTC)