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How missing genes interact

Epistasis is an interaction among genes that makes the phenotypic effect of an allele dependent on which alleles are present at other loci. Two new genomic studies find abundant epistasis in the yeast genome, with significant implications for the evolution of sex and for the inference of genetic pathways from genomic data.

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Figure 1: Two forms of epistasis.

Kim Caesar

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Zeyl, C. How missing genes interact. Nat Genet 39, 440–442 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng0407-440

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