pleiotropy
Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word pleiotropy. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word pleiotropy, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say pleiotropy in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word pleiotropy you have here. The definition of the word pleiotropy will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition ofpleiotropy, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
English
Etymology
Coined by Ludwig Plate in 1910, from Ancient Greek πλείων (pleíōn) + -tropy; by surface analysis, pleio- + -tropy.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /plaɪˈɒtɹəpi/
- (cot–caught merger) IPA(key): /plaɪˈɑtɹəpi/
Noun
pleiotropy (countable and uncountable, plural pleiotropies)
- (genetics) The influence of a single gene on multiple phenotypic traits; pleiotropism.
- Antonym: polygeny
- 2011, Laurence D. Mueller, Casandra L. Rauser, Michael R. Rose, Does Aging Stop?, Oxford University Press, page 65:
- This experimental design is analogous to the experiment that we performed to test whether antagonistic pleiotropy operates as a genetic mechanism in the evolution of late-life mortality rate plateaus.
- 2015, Lynnette L. Sievert, “Chapter 22: Human Senescence”, in Michael P. Muehlenbein, editor, Basics in Human Evolution, Elsevier (Academic Press), page 315:
- George C. Williams (1957) first developed the idea that pleiotropy might be an important determinant of senescence. Pleiotropy simply means that single genes have multiple effects. With regard to aging, Williams proposed that the same genes could have beneficial effects early in life but detrimental effects late in life. Because the effects are counteracting, the theory has been called "antagonistic pleiotropy."
- 2016, Mark W. Blows, Katrina McGuigan, “11: The distribution of genetic variance across phenotypic space and the response to selection”, in Spencer C. H. Barrett, Robert I. Colautti, Katrina M. Dlugosch, Loren H. Rieseberg, editors, Invasion Genetics, Wiley, page 192:
- Much of the recent discussion of the extent of pleiotropy has been stimulated by the work of Gunter Wagner and colleagues (Wagner et al. 2008; Wagner & Zhang 2011), taking advantage of recent methodological advances to test a hypothesis of universal pleiotropy, whereby all traits are affected by each gene.
- (pharmacology) The existence of drug effects (especially beneficial effects) other than the one for which the drug was designed.