Perspectivas en genómica poblacional: Genes, poblaciones y arquitectura genética

genetic architecture (ga) refers to the patterns of genetic effects that build and control a given phenotypic character and their variation properties. a description of ga can include declarations about the gene and number of alleles, the distri-bution of the allelic and mutational effects, and the patterns of pleiotropy, dominance and epistasis. the classical population genetics tends to treat the ga as a group of invariable para-meters and not as an evolutionary variable. the neon-dar - winian paradigm more or less defines the evolution as a chan ge in the allelic frequencies and gives small scope for the evolution of the allelic effects. concepts as the genetic canalization, the evolution of the reduced genetic variation, and the genetic assimilation -evolutionary answers based on the induced environmental variation- were difficult to frame in this line of work and were followed by a few investigators, being treated in an empirical way. the canalization has had finally; a solid interpretation in terms of population genetics and evolution of reduced effects of a gene, through epistatic interactions with an evolutionary genetic background, and actually is the focus of considerable theoretical and empirical interest. the fast development of the molecular technologies has permitted the generation of an almost unlimited number of markers that specify the structure and organization of the genome of any organism. the integration of the statistics with the molecular genetics permitted to have the first tool to disin-tegrate a quantitative characteristic in its individual genetic components (quantitative trait loci, qtl). after that, has been developed multiple statistical methods to locate com-plex characteristics and their applications to the animal, vegetal, and human genetics.