Talk:Genetic marker

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[edit] Note

that "genetic marker", in a medical dictionary, will have a definition like:
genetic marker n. A gene phenotypically associated with a particular, easily identified trait and
used to identify an individual or cell carrying that gene

but in geneology studies, it mostly refers to "junk DNA" areas.

A marker isn't necessarily associated with a phenotype. It's just a "unique" sequence. That is, di, tri, and tetranucleotide repeats aren't unique in the usual sense. But the number of repeats can make it a good identifier. Also, the uniqueness needn't be global. Usually we're only concerned with a small sub-population. The markers must be somewhat unique within the sub-population in order to be of any use. If it's a marker than everyone has, it's not a marker, just part of the normal DNA sequence. neffk 03:52, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this page needs work: the above comment was more directly helpful to me than the article. Is anyone working on this? wasserperson 21:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Looks like no one is. I came here looking for a mention of "neutral genetic markers" (aka "junk DNA"), but found none. —Pengo 04:10, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Isozymes not genetic markers?

The article Isozymes says that isozymes are genetic markers, but describes them as being enzymes with the same function but coming from different loci, while this article states that genetic markers have to be easily identifiable, associate with a specific locus . I'm confused.