Some human diseases, including obesity, Type II diabetes, and numerous cancers, are thought to be influenced by environments experienced in early life, including in utero. Maternal diet during the perinatal period may be especially important for adult offspring energy balance, potentially affecting both body composition and physical activity. This effect may be mediated by the genetic backgroun...

Four US genetic-economic indices for dairy cattle were retrofitted to illustrate differences in phenotypic response observed for retrospective selection over 2 generations for currently evaluated traits, even though producers did not have evaluations available at the time for direct selection for those traits. Differences among cows were compared based on ranking of their sires and maternal gra...

Hereford cows were randomly bred to Hereford, Angus, Simmental X Hereford and Simmental sires. Each sire breed group was represented by nine or 10 sires. These matings produced approximately 100 calves in each sire breed group over 4 yr. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of calf breed on characteristics of the cow such as milk production, reproduction, measures of conditio...

Records of birth weight (BW), weaning weight (WW) and condition score (CS) from 1,467 Brahman and Brahman X Angus crossbred calves from Brahman and crossbred Brahman sires and Brahman, crossbred Brahman and Angus dams were collected at the Subtropical Agricultural Research Station, Brooksville, Florida, from 1971 to 1982. Best linear unbiased estimates (BLUE) of Brahman sire and dam group addit...

An animal model and computer software were developed to conduct across-herd genetic evaluations using data from producers participating in the Sow Productivity Index program of the American Yorkshire Club. The final data set consisted of 61,596 litter records from 1986 to early 1990. The animal model included fixed contemporary group effects and random additive direct, service sire, permanent e...

Maternal effects facilitate adaptation to changing environments because they alter individual offspring traits to match current conditions. We show that maternal effects can also resolve context-dependent, correlational selection on multiple offspring traits, promoting adaptation to more complex environments. In side-blotched lizards (Uta stansburiana), two alternative pathways of dorsal patter...

Sperm-packaged DNA must undergo extensive reorganization to ensure its timely participation in embryonic mitosis. Whereas maternal control over this remodeling is well described, paternal contributions are virtually unknown. In this study, we show that Drosophila melanogaster males lacking Heterochromatin Protein 1E (HP1E) sire inviable embryos that undergo catastrophic mitosis. In these embryo...

Separate estimates of breeding value can be combined using meta-analysis if a combined analysis of all data is not possible or efficient. Computation is fast but not exact if the reliabilities of the separate estimates are approximate, if the extent of overlap of the datasets is unknown, or if selection has occurred across the datasets. Selection index methods were used to combine single-trait ...

Individual heterosis and direct and maternal breed effects for postweaning average daily gain (ADG), off-test age (AGE) and probed backfat thickness (BF) were estimated from data on 1,664 pigs produced in a complete diallel mating system involving the Duroc, Yorkshire, Landrace and Spotted breeds. The same genetic parameters were estimated for various carcass traits by analyses of data collecte...

The stress of high milk production, along with increasing herd size and changes in facilities and management, has made fertility one of the main focuses of genetic improvement today. In the US, the reduction in calving rate to first service and the impact of this decrease in fertility on the Holstein breed, mainly in the last 20 years, is of major concern [27]. Figure 1 shows the clear trend fo...