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Oligogenic inheritance (Greek ὀλίγος – ὀligos = few, a little) describes a trait that is influenced by a few genes. Oligogenic inheritance represents an intermediate between monogenic inheritance in which a trait is determined by a single causative gene, and polygenic inheritance, in which a trait is influenced by many genes and often environmental factors.
In fact, the terms 'multifactorial' and 'polygenic' are used as synonyms and these terms are commonly used to describe the architecture of disease causing genetic component. [2] Multifactorial diseases are often found gathered in families yet, they do not show any distinct pattern of inheritance.
Polygenic inheritance can be explained as Mendelian inheritance at many loci, [9] resulting in a trait which is normally-distributed. If n is the number of involved loci, then the coefficients of the binomial expansion of ( a + b ) 2n will give the frequency of distribution of all n allele combinations .
The infinitesimal model, also known as the polygenic model, is a widely used statistical model in quantitative genetics and in genome-wide association studies.Originally developed in 1918 by Ronald Fisher, it is based on the idea that variation in a quantitative trait is influenced by an infinitely large number of genes, each of which makes an infinitely small (infinitesimal) contribution to ...
A polygenic trait is one whose phenotype is dependent on the additive effects of multiple genes. The contributions of each of these genes are typically small and add up to a final phenotype with a large amount of variation.
When Mendel's work on inheritance was rediscovered in 1900, scientists debated whether Mendel's laws could account for the continuous variation observed for many traits. [citation needed] One group known as the biometricians argued that continuous traits such as height were largely heritable, but could not be explained by the inheritance of single Mendelian genetic factors.
Polygenic adaptation describes a process in which a population adapts through small changes in allele frequencies at hundreds or thousands of loci. [ 1 ] Many traits in humans and other species are highly polygenic , i.e., affected by standing genetic variation at hundreds or thousands of loci.
Pleiotropy seems limited for many traits in humans since the SNP overlap, as measured by variance accounted for, between many polygenic predictors is small. Most genetic traits are polygenic in nature: controlled by many genetic variants, each of small effect. These genetic variants can reside in protein coding or non-coding regions of the genome.