Prediction of additive genetic effects for the QTL-cluster on the basis of data on surrounding markers in outbred populations.

This paper described a method for predicting additive effects of a cluster of tightly linked QTLs for outbred populations of animals in the situation where the QTLs are located on a chromosome segment surrounded by multiple linked DNA markers. We present a mixed model method for best linear unbiased prediction (conditional to the marker data) of the additive effects of the QTL-cluster and of the remaining QTLs unlinked to the marker linkage group. This method takes into consideration the identity-by-descent proportion (IBDP) for the particular chromosomal segment, in contrast to some other methods which use IBD probabilities at one specific location. In this method, fully informative data on different flanking markers is used to calculate the values of the expectations of the IBDPs (EIBDPs) between gametes for animals to be evaluated. Then the expected values are used as the elements of the gametic relationship matrix required in the best linear unbiased prediction. Giving a small numerical example, we illustrate how the present method can be used for the prediction of the QTL-cluster effects and for genetic evaluation of animals in outbred populations. A computational strategy is discussed on the basis of the calculation of the EIBDPs and the inverted gametic relationship matrix in complex pedigrees.