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Classical genetics
Classical genetics consists of the techniques and methodologies of genetics that predate molecular biology. While developed before scientists understood the molecular basis for inheritance, classical abstractions like Mendel's laws and Muller's morphs remain a useful tool for understanding and describing inherited traits. Classical techniques still relevant to modern genetic analysis include linkage analysis and linkage mapping, as well as the study of genetic diseases and traits through pedigree charts.
Behavioral genetics
Behavioral genetics studies the heritability and genetics of animal behavior, including human personality traits and psychological disorders. In humans, behavioral genetics studies the extent to which traits like intelligence or homosexuality are genetic, while the subfield of psychiatric genetics focuses on the heritability of disorders like alcoholism, schizophrenia, and autism. Because behaviors are complex traits arising from the interaction of many genes with the environment, twin studies are commonly used to help assess the extent to which these traits are heritable.
On an evolutionary timescale, the overlapping field of evolutionary psychology studies the evolution of and selection for social behaviors in animals. A common topic in this field is the study of altruism and how altruistic traits can evolve in animals despite being disadvantageous to the animal expressing the behavior.
Medical genetics
Main article: Medical genetics
Medical genetics involves the diagnosis and understanding of human genetic diseases and syndromes. Physicians trained as geneticists are involved in diagnosing the presence of genetic disorders, as well as providing genetic counseling to people carrying deleterious mutations. Researchers working in medical genetics seek to understand the hereditary component of human diseases by finding and studying the involved genes and mutations.
Molecular genetics
Molecular genetics is the application of molecular biology to genetics. The phrase is used to refer to both the existing field of knowledge regarding the molecular aspects of genetic material and associated mechanisms, as well as the application of techniques that have been developed as a consequence of these insights. Topics in molecular genetics include DNA structure and the genetic code, as well as the molecular mechanisms of recombination and mutation. Molecular genetic techniques include molecular cloning, the polymerase chain reaction, and DNA sequencing.
Population genetics
Population genetics is the study of genetic traits within populations of organisms and how these change over time. Traditionally, population genetics studies allele frequencies and the evolutionary forces that affect them: natural selection, genetic drift, mutation and migration. From these observations, population genetics attempts to explain such phenomena as adaptation and speciation. The subfield of ecological genetics studies the genetics of wild populations of organisms, as well as their effects on other organism populations in the ecosystem.
Quantitative genetics, another subfield of population genetics, studies the distribution and evolution of continuous traits in a population, as well as the genetic basis for these traits. Molecular genetics techniques allow the mapping of quantitative trait loci, a process which requires accurate phenotypic, pedigree and marker data from a large number of related individuals.
Population genetics is also closely linked with the methods of genetic epidemiology, which studies human diseases at the population level through techniques that take advantage of Mendelian randomization.
Genomics
Genomics is a field that involves the study of large-scale genetic patterns across the genome of a species, as well as differences between genomes of different species. The field generally depends on the availability of whole genome sequences and computational tools to automatically study these. Genomics can also be considered a subfield of bioinformatics, which uses computational approaches to analyze of large sets of biological data.
Closely-related fields
The term "genetics" is often widely conflated with the notion of genetic engineering, where the DNA of an organism is modified for some kind of practical end, but most research in genetics is aimed at understanding and explaining the effect of genes on phenotypes and in the role of genes in populations.
The field of epigenetics is also closely related to genetics, studying aspects of cellular state that are stable over the course of cellular division but are not encoded within the DNA sequence of the organism.
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Important notice:
The content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other
qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
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