The aim of this study was to compare alternative designs for implementation of genomic selection to improve maternal traits in pigs, with a conventional breeding scheme and a progeny testing scheme. The comparison was done through stochastic simulation of a pig population. It was assumed that selection was performed based on a trait that could be measured on females after the first litter, with...

The change from a Mendelian to a genomic breeding paradigm poses three challenges: to map the components of animal breeding onto a genomic conceptual frame work; to show how the genetic parameters comprising a genomic analysis can be obtained from actual farm data; and to show how genomic parameters can guide a breeding program. We are currently heavily engaged in the second challenge, but shou...

High-throughput computing (HTC) uses computer clusters to solve advanced computational problems, with the goal of accomplishing high-throughput over relatively long periods of time. In genomic selection, for example, a set of markers covering the entire genome is used to train a model based on known data, and the resulting model is used to predict the genetic merit of selection candidates. Soph...

Males and females share the vast majority of their genomes and yet are often subject to different, even conflicting, selection. Genomic and transcriptomic developments have made it possible to assess sex-specific selection at the molecular level, and it is clear that sex-specific selection shapes the evolutionary properties of several genomic characteristics, including transcription, post-trans...

Genomic selection (GS) has become a very intense field of research during recent years. GS may be defined as the simultaneous selection for many (tens or hundreds of thousands of) markers, which cover the entire genome in a dense manner so that all genes are expected to be in linkage disequilibrium with at least some of the markers. In a sense, GS is marker assisted selection on a genome wide s...

Selection signatures are genomic regions harboring DNA sequences functionally involved in the genetic variation of traits subject to selection. Selection signatures have been intensively studied in recent years because of their relevance to evolutionary biology and their potential association with genes that control phenotypes of interest in wild and domestic populations. Selection signature re...

Schistosomiasis is a neglected tropical disease caused by multiple parasitic Schistosoma species, and which impacts over 200 million people globally, mainly in low- middle-income countries. Genomic surveillance to detect evidence for natural selection schistosome populations represents an emerging promising approach identify interpret responses ongoing control efforts or other environmental fac...