Author(s)

Shinji Ijichi^{1, 2}, Naomi Ijichi², Yukina Ijichi², Junko Nagata¹, Chikako Imamura³, Hisami Sameshima¹, Yoichi Kawaike¹, Hirofumi Morioka¹

¹Health Service Center, Kagoshima University, Kagoshima, Japan.
²Institute for Externalization of Gifts and Talents (EGT), Kagoshima, Japan.
³Support Center for Students with Disabilities, Kagoshima University, Kagoshima, Japan.

Stochastic epistasis that is one of the characteristics of epistatic gene modules can have an important role in the maintenance of intraspecific population diversity. The effect of an epistatic modifier variant can vary in size and direction among the modifier careers on the basis of stochastic genetic individuality and the entire module effect can be also individually stochastic. This stochastic genetic contribution under a genetic background may be conditional upon the presence of a monomorphic switch locus in the gene module. The genetic background includes multiple modifier variants and the gene module is composed of the switch and the modifiers. The bell-shaped distribution of quantitative traits can be well simulated by the involvement of multiple stochastic epistatic modules. The phenotypic stochasticity makes the presence of switch and modifiers cryptic or missing in the research field and this cryptic gene networks can maintain and innovate in the phenotypic diversity under selection as a process of the evolution of complexity.

Population Diversity, Stochastic Epistasis, Human Complex Traits, Autism

Ijichi, S. , Ijichi, N. , Ijichi, Y. , Nagata, J. , Imamura, C. , Sameshima, H. , Kawaike, Y. and Morioka, H. (2015) The Origin of Population Diversity: Stochastic Interactions between a Modifier Variant and the Individual Genetic Background. Natural Science, 7, 255-265. doi: 10.4236/ns.2015.75029.