Chapter 11, January 2009

Phillips has reviewed the different ways that the term 'epistasis' has come to be used by geneticists. My use of the term fits with the original definition by Bateson, defining epistasis to be the effect of one mutation in masking the effect of a mutation in another gene. This is what Phillips refers to as 'compositional epistasis', since it depends on the genetic composition of the experimental strains.

Population geneticists, following the example of R.A. Fisher, have used the term to refer to a wider range of gene interaction since wild populations have no standard wild-type genetic background composition for comparison. Phillips calls this use 'statistical epistasis'.

The review also connects epistasis to more recent work in systems biology, and provides an excellent further context to some of my discussion in Chapter 12. It also delves much more deeply into the effect of gene interactions in natural populations, a topic that I introduce in Chapter 12 but do not develop as fully as he does in this review article.

Reference:

P.C. Phillips, 2008. Epistasis - the essential role of gene interactions in the structure and evolution of genetic systems. Nature Review Genetics 9: 855-867