Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Pedigree Analysis

Pedigree Analysis

Pedigree Analysis

Pedigree Analysis

Incomplete Dominance

Incomplete Dominance

Gregor Mendel's work (1822 - 1884) was primarily focused on pea plants. Through his initial experiments, he determined that every gene in a diploid cell has two variants called alleles inherited from each parent. He suggested that amongst these two alleles, one allele is dominant in character and the other recessive. The combination of alleles determines the phenotype of a gene in an organism.

Mutation, Gene Flow, and Genetic Drift

Mutation, Gene Flow, and Genetic Drift

In a population that is not at Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, the frequency of alleles changes over time. Therefore, any deviations from the five conditions of Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium can alter the genetic variation of a given population. Conditions that change the genetic variability of a population include mutations, natural selection, non-random mating, gene flow, and genetic drift (small population size).Mechanisms of Genetic VariationThe original sources of genetic variation are mutations,...

Law of Segregation

Law of Segregation

When crossing pea plants, Mendel noticed that one of the parental traits would sometimes disappear in the first generation of offspring, called the F1 generation, and could reappear in the next generation (F2). He concluded that one of the traits must be dominant over the other, thereby causing masking of one trait in the F1 generation. When he crossed the F1 plants, he found that 75% of the offspring in the F2 generation had the dominant phenotype, while 25% had the recessive phenotype.

Genetic Drift

Genetic Drift

Natural selection—probably the most well-known evolutionary mechanism—increases the prevalence of traits that enhance survival and reproduction. However, evolution does not merely propagate favorable traits, nor does it always benefit populations.Life is not fair. A deer grazing contentedly in a field can have her meal cut tragically short by a bolt of lightning. If the doomed doe is one of only three in the population, 1/3 of the population’s gene pool is lost. Random events like this can...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Counting Rankings of Tree-Child Networks.

Bulletin of mathematical biology·2026

Same author

Predicting the depth of the most recent common ancestor of a random sample of k species: the impact of phylogenetic tree shape.

Journal of mathematical biology·2026

Same author

A Dichotomy Law for Certain Classes of Phylogenetic Networks.

Bulletin of mathematical biology·2025

Same author

The Asymptotic Distribution of the <i>k</i>-Robinson-Foulds Dissimilarity Measure on Labeled Trees.

Journal of computational biology : a journal of computational molecular cell biology·2025

Same author

Surprising effects of differential loss in genome evolution: the last-one-out.

FEMS microbiology letters·2025

Same author

Asymptotic Enumeration of Normal and Hybridization Networks via Tree Decoration.

Bulletin of mathematical biology·2025

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jul 7, 2026

Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations

Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations

Published on: February 3, 2023

Reconstructing pedigrees: a stochastic perspective.

Bhalchandra D Thatte¹, Mike Steel

¹Biomathematics Research Centre, Mathematics and Computer Science Building, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand. bdthatte@gmail.com

Journal of Theoretical Biology

|February 6, 2008

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Researchers explored reconstructing family trees (pedigrees) from genomic sequence data. They found that for specific evolutionary models, pedigrees can be recovered from long sequences, complementing prior impossibility results.

More Related Videos

Shifting Zebrafish Lethal Skeletal Mutant Penetrance by Progeny Testing

Shifting Zebrafish Lethal Skeletal Mutant Penetrance by Progeny Testing

Published on: September 1, 2017

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jul 7, 2026

Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations

Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations

Published on: February 3, 2023

Shifting Zebrafish Lethal Skeletal Mutant Penetrance by Progeny Testing

Shifting Zebrafish Lethal Skeletal Mutant Penetrance by Progeny Testing

Published on: September 1, 2017

Area of Science:

Computational Biology
Population Genetics
Genomics

Background:

Pedigrees model ancestry in sexually reproducing populations.
Genomic sequence data is increasingly available.
Reconstructing pedigrees from extant individuals is a challenge.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the theoretical possibility of reconstructing pedigrees from genomic sequence data.
To identify conditions under which pedigree reconstruction is feasible.

Main Methods:

Theoretical analysis of sequence evolution models.
Exploration of stochastic processes governing genetic inheritance.
Mathematical modeling of pedigree reconstruction from sequence data.

Main Results:

Pedigree reconstruction is possible for certain stochastic processes.
Sufficiently long sequence data can enable recovery of pedigrees up to isomorphism.
Findings contrast with studies showing reconstruction impossibility based solely on relatedness degrees.

Conclusions:

Theoretical models of sequence evolution are crucial for pedigree reconstruction.
Genomic data, under specific evolutionary assumptions, can reveal ancestral relationships.
This work advances understanding of the limits and possibilities of inferring population history from genetic data.