heritability

(noun)

The condition of being passed down through genes.

Related Terms

  • miserliness
  • innate
  • gene
  • epigenetics
  • polygenic
  • temperament
  • trait
  • sociocultural
  • perinatal
  • genotype
  • human genome
  • locus

(noun)

The ratio of the genetic variance of a population to its phenotypic variance; i.e., the proportion of variability that is genetic in origin

Related Terms

  • miserliness
  • innate
  • gene
  • epigenetics
  • polygenic
  • temperament
  • trait
  • sociocultural
  • perinatal
  • genotype
  • human genome
  • locus

(noun)

The proportion of difference among people that is attributed to genetics.

Related Terms

  • miserliness
  • innate
  • gene
  • epigenetics
  • polygenic
  • temperament
  • trait
  • sociocultural
  • perinatal
  • genotype
  • human genome
  • locus

Examples of heritability in the following topics:

  • Genetic and Environmental Impacts on Intelligence

    • Some traits, like eye color, are highly heritable and can be easily traced.
    • However, even highly heritable traits are subject to environmental influences during development.
    • However, the heritability of IQ in juvenile twins is much lower at 0.45.
    • Thus, despite the high heritability of IQ, we can determine that there is an environmental influence as well.
    • This chart illustrates patterns in studies of heritability of traits in certain individuals.
  • Nature vs. Nurture

    • Individual development, even of highly heritable traits such as eye color, depends not only on heritability but on a range of environmental factors, such as the other genes present in the organism and the temperature and oxygen levels during development.
    • However, some traits which reflect underlying talents and temperaments—such as how proficient at a language, how religious, or how liberal or conservative—can be partially heritable.
    • Trait A shows a high sibling correlation but little heritability (illustrating the importance of environment).
    • Trait B shows a high heritability, since the correlation of the trait rises sharply with the degree of genetic similarity.
    • Trait C shows low heritability as well as low correlation generally, suggesting that the degree to which individuals display trait C has little to do with either genes or predictable environmental factors.
  • Gene-Environment Correlations: Nature or Nurture?

    • Parents create a home environment that is influenced by their own heritable characteristics.
    • Since intelligence is moderately heritable, it can be argued that intelligence in the child is inherited rather than a factor of the home environment created by the parents.
    • Evocative gene-environment correlation happens when an individual's (heritable) behavior evokes an environmental response.
    • Studies of adult twins are used to investigate which traits are heritable.
  • Genetics, the Brain, and Personality

    • These findings suggest the heritability of some personality traits, implying that some aspects of our personalities are largely controlled by genetics.
    • Twin studies have shown that heritable factors are not the only predictor of personality or even diseases such as schizophrenia; the biological perspective does not fully address non-heritable factors.
  • The Influence of Genes on Behavior

    • Behavioral genetics studies heritability of behavioral traits, and it overlaps with genetics, psychology, and ethology (the scientific study of human and animal behavior).
  • Genetically Engineered Vaccines

    • Genetic engineering alters the genetic makeup of an organism using techniques that remove heritable material, or that introduce DNA prepared outside the organism either directly into the host or into a cell that is then fused or hybridized with the host.
    • This involves using recombinant nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) techniques to form new combinations of heritable genetic material, followed by the incorporation of that material either indirectly through a vector system or directly through micro-injection, macro-injection and micro-encapsulation techniques.
  • Processes and Patterns of Evolution

    • A heritable trait that aids the survival and reproduction of an organism in its present environment is called an adaptation.
    • Explain why only heritable variation can be acted upon by natural selection
  • Defining Population Evolution

    • Mutations occur spontaneously, but not all mutations are heritable; they are passed down to offspring only if the mutations occur in the gametes.
    • These heritable mutations are responsible for the rise of new traits in a population.
  • Genetic Analysis

    • Mutation is random, undirected, heritable variation caused by alteration in nucleotide sequence at some point of DNA.
  • Congenital Defects

    • Most of these are single gene defects, usually heritable.
Subjects
  • Accounting
  • Algebra
  • Art History
  • Biology
  • Business
  • Calculus
  • Chemistry
  • Communications
  • Economics
  • Finance
  • Management
  • Marketing
  • Microbiology
  • Physics
  • Physiology
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  • Sociology
  • Statistics
  • U.S. History
  • World History
  • Writing

Except where noted, content and user contributions on this site are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 with attribution required.