How Much of Complex Diseases are Controlled by the Genome? (Ken Weiss)

I have been reading the book Genetics and the Logic of Evolution by Ken Weiss and Anne Buchanan, and found it thought-provoking. The impatient readers are encouraged to first take a look at this 2005 review paper, which presents their ideas in condensed form -

The Phenogenetic Logic of Life

Our regular readers are already familiar with their excellent blog - ‘The Mermaid’s Tale’ named after their later book, which covers topics similar to ‘Genetics and the Logic of Evolution’.

Today’s blog post is about a Penn State presentation, where professor Weiss discussed the extent by which complex diseases are ‘controlled’ through our genomes. Before listening to the entire talk, please fast forward to 46:00, where he showed the roles of genes and environment. The following figure presents the risk of breast cancer by age group of those born in USA before 1940s and after 1940s. If the genomes did not change, isn’t the dramatic rise in risk entirely due to environment? He presented a test case from Finland that suggests so.

You can listen to the full talk here -