Digital Commons Network^™

New Approaches To The Use Of Twins In Biomedical Research, Walter E. Nance

MCV/Q, Medical College of Virginia Quarterly

Human geneticists are often accused of being preoccupied with exotic syndromes that are of marginal relevance to the general population. Brilliant success has been achieved during the past two decades in defining the nature and function of the genetic material, the molecular pathology of a large number of metabolic diseases, the phenotype of more than 2,000 Mendelian traits, and more recently the chromosomal location of a rapidly expanding number of human gene pairs. In contrast, relatively little progress has been made in the genetic analysis of quantitative traits such as blood pressure, serum cholesterol, intelligence quotient, skin color, height, birth …