Quantitative genetics studies

Professor Allen Moor explains that quantitative genetics is a technique for determining candidate genes for traits or disorders associated with multiple genes.

Well quantitative genetics is a statistical approach so rather then looking at the physical makeup (the DNA that causes differences in traits) you use associations between parents and offspring or between siblings and relatives. So relatives are more similar then unrelated individuals and so by keeping track of relatedness we can see whether individuals who are more similar in terms of relatedness are also more similar in a behavior or a phenotype that is more difficult to study. So you use quantitative genetics for those traits that aren’t really simple traits like classic traits that are single gene traits whether or not you have an attached ear lobe, which may be caused by a single gene as opposed to how tall you are which is caused by many, many different genes, and it would be difficult to study all of those genes at once. So instead of looking at the genes we actually look at the phenotype, the trait that we are interested in, and associate it using statistical techniques.