Systems Genetics: Linking Genotypes and Phenotypes

Whereas genetic studies have traditionally focused on explaining heritance of single traits and their phenotypes, recent technological advances have made it possible to comprehensively dissect the genetic architecture of complex traits and quantify how genes interact to shape phenotypes. This exciting new area has been termed systems genetics and is born out of a synthesis of multiple fields, integrating a range of approaches and exploiting our increased ability to obtain quantitative and detailed measurements on a broad spectrum of phenotypes. Gathering the contributions of leading scientists, both computational and experimental, this book shows how experimental perturbations can help us to understand the link between genotype and phenotype. A snapshot of current research activity and state-of-the-art approaches to systems genetics are provided, including work from model organisms such as Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Drosophila melanogaster, as well as from human studies.

Florian Markowetz is a Group Leader at Cancer Research UK's Cambridge Research Institute. His research is concerned with developing statistical and mathematical models of complex biological systems and analysing large-scale molecular data. His research interests range from the analysis of molecular clinical data to inference of cellular networks from high-throughput gene perturbation screens and integration of heterogeneous data sources using machines learning techniques and probabilistic graphic models.

Michael Boutros is a group leader at the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ) in Heidelberg where he heads the Division of Signalling and Functional Genomics. He also holds a Professorship at the University of Heidelberg. His research focuses on the systematic dissection signalling pathways in Drosophila and mammalian cells, which are important during development and cancer. He attempts to define key components of signalling pathways, discovering interaction between pathways, and characterisation of signalling networks under normal and perturbed conditions.