Schizophrenia is a complex disease predisposed by genes, environment and their interaction. Its diagnosis is mainly based on clinic observations with its treatment following a trial-and-error manner. Both linkage studies and following association studies have identified some genes and genomic regions which gain insight into pathophysiological foundation of the disease. However, low replication ...

Introduction In the chapter on Mendel and Morgan, we saw how the transmission of genes from one generation to another follows precise mathematical formula. The traits discussed in that chapter, however, were discrete traits—peas are either yellow or green, someone either has a disorder or does not have the disorder. But many behavioral traits are not like these clear-cut, have-it-or-don’t-have-...

A complex binary trait is a character that has a dichotomous expression but with a polygenic genetic background. Mapping quantitative trait loci (QTL) for such traits is difficult because of the discrete nature and the reduced variation in the phenotypic distribution. Bayesian statistics are proved to be a powerful tool for solving complicated genetic problems, such as multiple QTL with nonaddi...

Linkage disequilibrium (LD) mapping can be successful if there is strong nonrandom association between marker alleles and an allele affecting a trait of interest. The principles of LD mapping of dichotomous traits are well understood, but less is known about LD mapping of a quantitative-trait locus (QTL). It is shown in this report that selective genotyping can increase the power to detect and ...

Dichotomous keys are the most popular type of identification keys. Studies have been conducted to evaluate dichotomous keys in many aspects. In this paper we propose an index for quantitative evaluation of dichotomous keys (Edicho). The index is based on the evenness and allows comparing identification keys of different sizes.