Quantitative genetics in the age of genomics

Quantitative genetics is indeed very healthy in this coming age of genomics, and will play an even greater role as genotypes of potential interest are investigated by human geneticists breeders, and evolutionary geneticists. While we have (or soon will have) the ability to do experiments that the founders of quantitative genetics could never envision in their wildest imagination, the basic machinery they developed is easily adaptable to the new analyses that will be required. Far from "freeing" molecular biologists from mathematics, the age of genomics has forced an appreciation of the importance of quantitative methods. As we start to mine this genomic information and attempt to map molecular variation into trait variation, quantitative genetics will move even more to the forefront. I'm afraid my molecular colleagues will have to develop a deeper appreciation of Fisher (1918).