The Interactive Effects of Genetics, Environment and Ontogeny on Quantitative Traits

Almost all biological traits of importance are complex, variation in such traits being controlled by many genes of small effect plus environmental influences. Probing the causes of complex trait variation is critical to our understanding in disciplines as diverse as evolutionary biology, animal and plant breeding, behaviour, genetics of disease and personalised medicine. The advent of high throughput phenotyping, genotyping and sequencing has transformed our ability to dissect these traits and harness findings across all these disciplines, and it is the aim of this meeting to bring all these fields together.

For this meeting we are thinking about how quantitative traits vary in time and space through interactions between genetics and ontogeny or environmental variation. Our overarching themes include a focus on longitudinal studies, which might include disease trajectories, developmental trajectories, environmental change, selection and response and genotype by environment interactions. In particular, we aim to discuss how the hundreds of genetic associations we have found for complex traits in humans, animals and plants may be transformed into biological understanding, an ongoing and challenging endeavour. Applications of these themes include sustainability in agriculture and environmental management, management of infectious disease, and precision medicine.