Genetic relatedness analysis: modern data and new challenges
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 19, 2026

Heuristic Mining of Hierarchical Genotypes and Accessory Genome Loci in Bacterial Populations
Published on: December 7, 2021
Bruce S Weir1, Amy D Anderson, Amanda B Hepler
1Department of Biostatistics, University of Washington, BOX 357232, Seattle, Washington 98195-7232, USA. bsweir@u.washington.edu
Abstract:
Individuals who belong to the same family or the same population are related because of their shared ancestry. Population and quantitative genetics theory is built with parameters that describe relatedness, and the estimation of these parameters from genetic markers enables progress in fields as disparate as plant breeding, human disease gene mapping and forensic science. The large number of multiallelic microsatellite loci and biallelic SNPs that are now available have markedly increased the precision with which relationships can be estimated, although they have also revealed unexpected levels of genomic heterogeneity of relationship measures.
Related Concept Videos
Evolutionary Relationships through Genome Comparisons
Modern Molecular Taxonomy
Mutation, Gene Flow, and Genetic Drift
Genetic Variation
Genes exist in different versions called alleles, which...
Applications of Molecular Taxonomy
Synteny and Evolution
Around 80 million years ago, the human and mice lineages diverged from the common ancestor. During the course of evolution, the ancestral chromosome underwent...

