> With a large enough sample pool, we'd be able to correlate features with obscure genes, wouldn't we? Am I missing something fundamental?
Nature vs Nurture.
You'd find a huge sampling error because of epigenetics. The same genes in different people don't always kick in and do something.
However, finding out which gene + which life-style == bad stuff might still work out as a possibility.
Even those might not be repeatable in the future - I grew up running around in leaded gasoline land and the same genes will probably never have to deal with so much lead in the air in my kids. Does it matter that I might have special tolerance genes which protect my brain lead fumes?
The study would throw up interesting results, but not "feature -> genes", but maybe "genes -?-> features" (necessary but not sufficient).
>You'd find a huge sampling error because of epigenetics.
I'm skeptical that, just now that we know of epigenetic effects, they will invalidate all previously existing roughly-Mendelian genetics. It's not like people's eyes change from brown to blue if they're stressed in childhood.
So, you wouldn't necessarily find huge sampling error, you'd find sampling error proportionate to the epigenetic effect on that particular gene. Is that large? I suspect not for many genes we'd be interested in.
>Does it matter that I might have special tolerance genes which protect my brain lead fumes?
I don't think this is how epigenetic effects work.
Nature vs Nurture.
You'd find a huge sampling error because of epigenetics. The same genes in different people don't always kick in and do something.
However, finding out which gene + which life-style == bad stuff might still work out as a possibility.
Even those might not be repeatable in the future - I grew up running around in leaded gasoline land and the same genes will probably never have to deal with so much lead in the air in my kids. Does it matter that I might have special tolerance genes which protect my brain lead fumes?
The study would throw up interesting results, but not "feature -> genes", but maybe "genes -?-> features" (necessary but not sufficient).