The Genetic Architecture of Quantitative Traits Cannot Be Inferred from Variance Component Analysis

作者：Wen Huang, Trudy F. C. Mackay · 发表于：PLoS Genetics · 年份：2016 · DOI：10.1371/journal.pgen.1006421 · 被引用次数：209 · 研究领域：Genetic Mapping and Diversity in Plants and Animals、Genetic and phenotypic traits in livestock、Genetic Associations and Epidemiology

Classical quantitative genetic analyses estimate additive and non-additive genetic and environmental components of variance from phenotypes of related individuals without knowing the identities of quantitative trait loci (QTLs). Many studies have found a large proportion of quantitative trait variation can be attributed to the additive genetic variance (VA), providing the basis for claims that non-additive gene actions are unimportant. In this study, we show that arbitrarily defined parameterizations of genetic effects seemingly consistent with non-additive gene actions can also capture the majority of genetic variation. This reveals a logical flaw in using the relative magnitudes of variance components to indicate the relative importance of additive and non-additive gene actions. We discuss the implications and propose that variance component analyses should not be used to infer the genetic architecture of quantitative traits.