phenotype
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- CellPress - Cell - The phenotypic landscape of essential human genes
- Biology LibreTexts - Phenotypes and Genotypes
- Nature - Nature Communications - Evolutionarily informed machine learning enhances the power of predictive gene-to-phenotype relationships
- Science Learning Hub - Genotype and phenotype
- University of Washington - Department of Statistics - Genotypes and Phenotypes
- National Center for Biotechnology Information - PubMed Central - From Phenotype to Genotype
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - The Genotype/Phenotype Distinction
- The University of British Columbia - From genotype to phenotype: Genetic redundancy and the maintenance of an adaptive polymorphism in the context of high gene flow (PDF)
- Brown University - Division of Biology and Medicine - Genotype and Phenotype
- Frontiers - The differential view of genotype–phenotype relationships
- North Dakota State University - Mendel's First Law of Genetics (Law of Segregation)
- BMC - BMC Bioinformatics - Transfer learning for genotype–phenotype prediction using deep learning models
phenotype, all the observable characteristics of an organism that result from the interaction of itsgenotype (total genetic inheritance) with theenvironment. Examples of observable characteristics include behaviour, biochemical properties, colour, shape, and size.
The phenotype may change constantly throughout the life of an individual because of environmental changes and the physiological and morphological changes associated with aging. Differentenvironments can influence the development of inherited traits (as size, for example, is affected by available food supply) and alter expression by similar genotypes (for example, twins maturing in dissimilar families). In nature, the influence of the environment forms the basis ofnatural selection, which initially works on individuals, favouring the survival of those organisms with phenotypes best suited to their current environments. The survival advantage conferred to individuals exhibiting such phenotypes enables those individuals to reproduce with relatively high rates of success and thereby pass on the successful genotypes to subsequent generations. The interplay between genotype and phenotype is remarkably complex, however. For example, all inherited possibilities in the genotype are not expressed in the phenotype, because some are the result of latent, recessive, orinhibitedgenes.
One of the first to distinguish between elements passed from one generation to the next (the “germ” plasm) and the organisms that developed from those elements (the “soma”) was German biologistAugust Weismann, in the late 19th century. The germ plasm later became identified withDNA, which carries the blueprints for the synthesis ofproteins and their organization into a living body—the soma. Modern understanding of phenotype, however, is derived largely from the work of Danish botanist and geneticistWilhelm Ludvig Johannsen, who in the early 20th century introduced the termphenotype to describe the observable and measurable phenomena of organisms. (Johannsen also introduced the termgenotype, in reference to the heritable units of organisms.)
