A population of laboratory mice was weighed at the age of six weeks (full adult weight) and found to have a mean weight of 20 g. The narrow heritability of weight gain (h2) is known to be 0.25 in this laboratory strain. If mice weighing 24 g are selected and mated at random, what is the expected mean weight of the next generation?
Genetic Variation
Genetic variation refers to the variation in the genome sequences between individual organisms of a species. Individual differences or population differences can both be referred to as genetic variations. It is primarily caused by mutation, but other factors such as genetic drift and sexual reproduction also play a major role.
Quantitative Genetics
Quantitative genetics is the part of genetics that deals with the continuous trait, where the expression of various genes influences the phenotypes. Thus genes are expressed together to produce a trait with continuous variability. This is unlike the classical traits or qualitative traits, where each trait is controlled by the expression of a single or very few genes to produce a discontinuous variation.
A population of laboratory mice was weighed at the age of six weeks (full adult weight) and found to have a mean weight of 20 g. The narrow heritability of weight gain (h2) is known to be 0.25 in this laboratory strain. If mice weighing 24 g are selected and mated at random, what is the expected mean weight of the next generation?
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