The "missing heritability" problem states that genetic variants in Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) cannot completely explain the heritability of complex traits. Traditionally, the heritability of a phenotype is measured through familial studies using twins, siblings and other close relatives, making assumptions on the genetic similarities between them. When this heritability is compared ...

Heritability is a central element in quantitative genetics. New molecular markers to assess genetic variance and heritability are continually under development. The availability of molecular single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers can be applied for estimation of variance components and heritability on population, where relationship information is unknown. In this study, we evaluated the c...

The aim of this study was to estimate the heritability of and environmental contributions to skeletal muscle phenotypes (appendicular lean mass and calf muscle cross-sectional area) in subjects of African descent and to determine whether heritability estimates are impacted by sex or age. Body composition was measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry and computed tomography in 444 men and wom...

A path analytic study of blood pressure in Swedish families gave evidence for genetic heritability (0.18 for systolic, 0.13 for diastolic) and for cultural heritability, with evidence for an intergenerational difference giving higher estimates of cultural heritability in adults (0.19 for systolic, 0.08 for diastolic). A maternal effect for cultural inheritance was evident for systolic blood pre...

By applying multivariate statistical analysis, this research aimed to estimate the heritability and find relationships between the vegetative and reproductive characteristics of Prunus scoparia and Prunus elaeagnifolia. Twenty genotypes of each species were selected randomly from cultivated populations and twenty-two traits including the tree, leaf, flower, nut and kernel attributes were measur...

Schizophrenia is characterized by neuropsychological deficits across many cognitive domains. Cognitive phenotypes with high heritability and genetic overlap with schizophrenia liability can help elucidate the mechanisms leading from genes to psychopathology. We performed a meta-analysis of 170 published twin and family heritability studies of >800 000 nonpsychiatric and schizophrenia subjects t...

Endocrine disorders are substantial contributors to neonatal morbidity and mortality and, of these, congenital hypothyroidism (CH) is the most common (Kumar et al. 2009). CH is a common and preventable cause of mental retardation with an incidence of approximately 1 in 2,350 live births (Hinton et al. 2010). In Iowa, the Iowa Neonatal Metabolic Screening program (INMSP) uses thyroid stimulating...

The objectives of this study were to estimate heritabilities within herds participating in Dairy Herd Improvement and determine the relationship of the individual herd heritability with sire misidentification rate. Individual herd heritabilities for milk, fat, and protein yield and somatic cell score (SCS) were calculated with daughter-dam regression and daughter-sire predicted transmitting abi...