Genotype–Environment Interactions Are Highly Nonlinear ?

Question

[aravind121]

I have been reading the following article

 Diseases as network perturbations
Antonio del Sol1, Rudi Balling1, Lee Hood2 and David Galas2

and found a phrase which says

"Genotype–environment interactions are highly nonlinear"

What does non-linear interaction means here ?

Answer 1

[Josh Herr]

This is not a bioinformatics question and should be closed.

But the answer to your question (you didn't give much context here) is that genotype-environmental interactions do not change or are related in a linear fashion: i.e. this is not explained by a one unit of environmental change results in a one unit of gene expression change. I would argue that this due to the overall complexity of both environmental factors (temperature, humidity, nutrient availaility, etc.) and gene expression responses (other disease influences, overall health of the individual, genetic make-up, etc. etc.).