It has become commonplace to map individual quantitative trait loci (QTL) in experimental organisms; the means (line-crosses and dense maps of markers) and motivation (the close relationship between continuous physiological traits and common, complex diseases) are self-evident. Progress in mapping human QTL has been more gradual, an inevitable consequence of genetic mapping in a natural populat...

Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) breeding programs strive to increase grain yield; however, the progress is hampered due to its quantitative inheritance, low heritability, and confounding environmental effects. In the present study, a winter wheat population of 159 recombinant inbred lines (RILs) was evaluated in six trials under rainfed, terminal drought, and fully-irrigated conditions, over four ...

BACKGROUND Nested association mapping (NAM) is a novel genetic mating design that combines the advantages of linkage analysis and association mapping. This design provides opportunities to study the inheritance of complex traits, but also requires more advanced statistical methods. In this paper, we present the detailed algorithm of a QTL linkage mapping method suitable for genetic populations ...

C57BL/6J (B6) and DBA/2J (D2) strains and two derivative populations, BXD recombinant inbred strains (BXD RIs) and B6D2F2, were used to explore genetic basis for variation in muscle weight at 500 days of age. In parallel with findings in 200-day-old mice (Lionikas A, Blizard DA, Vandenbergh DJ, Glover MG, Stout JT, Vogler GP, McClearn GE, and Larsson L. Physiol Genomics 16: 141-152, 2003), weig...

What is a QTL? A Quantitative Trait Locus a region of the genome that is associated with an effect on a quantitative trait. Conceptually, a QTL can be a single gene, or it may be a cluster of linked genes that affect the trait. Using the methods for QTL detection to be discussed below, it is not possible to resolve the difference, and use the term “locus” to refer to a chromosomal region. Are Q...

BACKGROUND Recent developments in genetic technology and methodology enable accurate detection of QTL and estimation of breeding values, even in individuals without phenotypes. The QTL-MAS workshop offers the opportunity to test different methods to perform a genome-wide association study on simulated data with a QTL structure that is unknown beforehand. The simulated data contained 3,220 indiv...

Selection on quantitative trait loci (QTL) may vary among natural environments due to differences in the genetic architecture of traits, environment-specific allelic effects or changes in the direction and magnitude of selection on specific traits. To dissect the environmental differences in selection on life history QTL across climatic regions, we grew a panel of interconnected recombinant inb...

A complex binary trait is a character that has a dichotomous expression but with a polygenic genetic background. Mapping quantitative trait loci (QTL) for such traits is difficult because of the discrete nature and the reduced variation in the phenotypic distribution. Bayesian statistics are proved to be a powerful tool for solving complicated genetic problems, such as multiple QTL with nonaddi...

We analyzed the genetic basis of morphological differences between two wild species of teosinte (Zea diploperennis and Z. mays ssp. parviglumis), which are relatives of maize. These two species differ in a number of taxonomically important traits including the structure of the tassel (male inflorescence), which is the focus of this report. To investigate the genetic inheritance of six tassel tr...

AIM To present a novel strategy for mapping quantitative trait loci (QTL), using human metapopulations. The strategy is based on the expectation that in geographic clusters of small and distinct human isolates, a combination of founder effect and genetic drift can dramatically increase population frequency of rare QTL variants with large effect. In such cases, the distribution of QT measurement...