Alvarez-Castro, Jose
- Uppsala University
Abstract
In this contribution, we study the genetic mechanisms leading to differences in the observed growth patterns of domesticated White Leghorn chickens and their wild ancestor the red jungle fowl. An epistatic QTL analysis for several body-weight measures from hatch to adulthood confirms earlier findings that polymorphisms at > 15 loci contribute to body-weight determination in an F(2) intercross between these populations and that many loci are involved in complex genetic interactions. Here, we use a new genetic model to decompose the genetic effects of this multilocus epistatic genetic network. The results show how the functional modeling of genetic effects provides new insights into how genetic interactions in a large set of loci jointly contribute to phenotypic expression. By exploring the functional effects of QTL allels, we show that some alleles can display temporal shifts in the expression of genetic effects due to their dependencies on the genetic background. Our results demonstrate that the effects of many genes are dependent on genetic interactions with other loci and how their involvement in the domestication process relies on these interactions.
Published in
Genetics
2008, volume: 179, number: 3, pages: 1591-1599
Publisher: GENETICS
SLU Authors
Carlborg, Örjan
- Uppsala University
UKÄ Subject classification
Animal and Dairy Science
Veterinary Science
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.108.089300
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/19593