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0:00
DONAGH BERRY: Hello.
My name is Donagh Berry and I am
an animals quantitative geneticist
at Tegasc, Moorepark, in Ireland.
I'm going to talk to you about
the genetics of animal health.
0:13
With increasing world human
population size and affluence,
there is expected to be a large
increase in the demand for food.
To achieve this demand,
animal health is fundamental.
There's also increasing
consumer concern, especially
in the developed world, on
food safety, especially when it
comes to zoonotic
diseases, which can be
transmitted from animals to humans.
And then finally, there's
also increasing concern
over animal health and welfare.
0:44
Genetics is particularly
advantageous in that it is what
we call cumulative and permanent.
So in other words, we can
introduce or introgress
good genes into a population.
And these can be built
on with each generation.
On the converse, however,
if you introduce bad genes,
they can be very
difficult to breed out.
So therefore, genetics must
form part of an overall strategy
to improve the animal health
status of our world population.
1:15
I would argue that
the heritability is
probably one of the most
misinterpreted statistics
in quantitative genetics.
The heritablity depicts the
proportion of the field variation
attributable to genetics.
So in other words, if you went
to a population of animals, what
proportion of the differences
or variation amongst those
animals is actually
due to differences
in their genetic makeup?
Now, a key point to remember
about heritablity and variation
is that a small proportion of
a trait with lots of variation
may actually exhibit more variation
than a moderate proportion
of a trait with little variation.
