The Prominence and Pertinence of Pleiotropy

Randy Nesse recently reviewed a new book (“The Evolution of Obesity” by Power and Schulkin) on weight regulation [Nature, 2009)].  In the course of the review, Nesse took note of the authors’ evidence that leptin-associated function is highly...

Growing Complexities in Relating Genotype to Phenotype

Geneticists and evolutionary biologists have for decades embraced the view, no doubt reinforced by terminology such as “silent” (i.e., synonymous) mutations, that for protein-encoding genes, genotype determines phenotype through control of the amino acid...