Like the sprinter gene or what determines eye color or risk of diabetes. How do we know that’s what they do when there is so many genes to sift through?
In: Biology
There’s two ways association and testing. Association is less solid basically we can take 1000 of an animal look at their genes and their physical traits the associate things. For example if we take the 1000 people and see that every one with A1 genes has blue eyes and everyone with A2 genes has brown eyes as long as there’s no overlap we can assume that those genes cause those traits the problem is this isn’t super specific we can’t guarantee that those genes affect just one trait and if all of our A2’s also have brown hair then maybe the A2 gene causes brown hair. Testing is more specific we can essentially clone an animal so they all have the same genetic make up then we change one gene for instance we take someone with
A2(brown eyes) clone them and change the A2 to A1 if their eyes change color that means that the gene controls eye color.
The problem is genes can interact with other genes to cause other traits. For instance A1 causes blue eyes and if you have a B1 as well you get blonde hair but B2 with A1 may cause brown hair. Basically it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what genes do because they don’t just do one thing.
I am not a biologist, but I do at least know one of the ways we can figure it out: by messing with it. If you remove or otherwise alter the gene, and something in the animal is different when it develops, you can logically assume that part of the gene controls or affects the thing that was different.
There are more humane and complex ways biologists can determine which genes do what, I hope someone else can explain these processes here.
A lot of science is the equivalent of poking something with a stick to see if it moves. Mess with something and observe what happens, then see if you can design an experiment that tests why you think it’s happening.
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