How old are quantitative trait loci and how widely do they segregate?

KE Kemper; BJ Hayes; HD Daetwyler; ME Goddard

Journal article

How old are quantitative trait loci and how widely do they segregate?

KE Kemper, BJ Hayes, HD Daetwyler, ME Goddard

Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics | Published : 2015

DOI: 10.1111/jbg.12152

Abstract

The mutations that cause genetic variation in quantitative traits could be old and segregate across many breeds or they could be young and segregate only within one breed. This has implications for our understanding of the evolution of quantitative traits and for genomic prediction to improve livestock. We investigated the age of quantitative trait loci (QTL) for milk production traits identified as segregating in Holstein dairy cattle. We use a multitrait method and found that six of 11 QTL also segregate in Jerseys. Variants identified as Holstein-only QTL were fixed or rare [minor allele frequency (MAF) < 0.05] in Jersey. The age of the QTL mutations appears to vary from perhaps 2000 to 5..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

Mike Goddard Author

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Grants

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

The authors would like to take this opportunity to extend their best wishes to John James on the occasion of his 80th birthday. We (and in particular MEG) would like to thank John for his advice and encouragement over many years. This research was supported under Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects funding scheme (project DP1093502). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Australian Research Council. The authors acknowledge the 1000 Bull Genomes Project for providing whole-genome sequence data.