Genetic limits of sport performance: Quo vadis?

摘要

Olympic athletes are characterized by several biological and behavioral abilities and traits, all integrated in a complex system. The key of understanding the limits of Olympic-level sport performance, is understanding the two major sources of individual differences in those abilities and traits; namely, genes and environment.rnIn this respect, a number of twin studies have been conducted over the past few years, to elucidate the genetic effect on the variation observed in several phe-notypes linked to sport performance, such as functional abilities, morphological components, muscle composition, motor attributes and behavioral traits. The twin model used in these studies makes use of monozygotic (MZ) and dizygotic (DZ) twins.