#pleiotropy

In a 2013 Nature Reviews Genetics article, geneticist Nadia Solovieff and colleagues outlined all the potential causal mechanisms that might make two traits genetically correlated. They drew a critical distinction between “biological” and “mediated” pleiotropy. The former is the “obvious” inference, which is that the same genes cause both intelligence and longevity. But the latter possibility is that the variables only appear to be genetically correlated, because genes cause one factor, which then goes on to cause the other. That is, if genes cause intelligence, and intelligence (via lifestyle choices etc.) causes a longer lifespan, we’d still see the same genetic correlation, even if those genes have no direct effect on lifespan itself. If true, this would still be pleiotropy of a sort: the genes linked to intelligence are having an indirect effect on lifespan. But as the authors acknowledge in their paper, this “pleiotropy-lite” interpretation of the new findings would mean we don’t yet have knockdown evidence for the genetic “system integrity” idea.

Pleiotropy, robustness and rewiring in the context of complex disease progression. Multiple data integration for the study of disease co-occurrences in an individual.

A single gene that has several effects

       Sickle Cell Anemia