title: Introduction to focus issue: genetic interactions.
abstract: The perturbation of a gene in an organism's genome often causes changes in the organism's observable properties or phenotypes. It is not obvious a priori whether the simultaneous perturbation of two genes produces a phenotypic change that is easily predictable from the changes caused by individual perturbations. In fact, this is often not the case: the nonlinearity and interdependence between genetic variants in determining phenotypes, also known as epistasis, is a prevalent phenomenon in biological systems. This focus issue presents recent developments in the study of epistasis and genetic interactions, emphasizing the broad implications of this phenomenon in evolutionary biology, functional genomics, and human diseases.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Segrè
authors.forename: Christopher J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Marx
mesh_terms: D004843:Epistasis, Genetic; D006801:Humans; D008957:Models, Genetic; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics