“Gene for obesity discovered.” “Scientists find gene for bad manners.”
Such “gene for” headlines often oversimplify the complex sets of genes that underlie many biological traits. A new study has used game theory to show just how much of the picture single-gene studies are missing.
The standard way to find the functional role of a gene is to engineer organisms to lack that gene and see whether the organisms behave differently.
Using a well-verified computer model of the inner workings of brewer’s yeast, researchers in Israel and Germany compared this single-gene approach with studies that “knock out” two, three or four genes at a time.