The book of abstracts is available. - Poznań

14 th QTL-MAS Workshop, Poznań University of Life Sciences, Poland 2010Haplotype inference based on Hidden Markov Models in the QTL-MASmulti-generational datasetCarl Nettelblad 1∗1Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University∗ Presenting author: Carl Nettelblad, email: carl.nettelblad@it.uu.seBackground. In previous work (Nettelblad et al., LNCS 6462, 2009, Springer Verlag) wedemonstrated an approach for efficient computation of genotype probabilities, and moregenerally probabilities of allele inheritance in inbred as well as outbred populations. Thiswork also included an extension for haplotype inference, or phasing, using Hidden MarkovModels. The code was able to phase > 99.0 % of all heterozygous markers in the dataset fromthe 12 th QTL-MAS correctly.Computational phasing of multi-thousand marker datasets has not become common as of yet.In this work, we elaborate on the differences in allele probabilities, as well as QTL detectionperformance, when considering an identical workflow with and without phasing based onexpectation-maximization.Results. Using phasing for 20 iterations, almost all heterozygous markers in all generationsconverged. This makes actual allele origin traceable, back to the founder generation, in over99 % of all locus-individual pairs. Some specific regions turned out to be hard to track, but theartifacts were minor in a dense marker set of the current type. Haldane mapping distanceswere also computed during the phasing.A litter/parental effect was fitted for each pair of parents for the scalar phenotype in thedataset, explaining about 27.7 % of the total phenotypic variance in that phenotype.Obviously, some genetic variance is also included in this number.The residuals from the litter fitting were fitted against loci, with an indicator vector for eachindividual indicating the allele origin probability for each of the 40 founder alleles. Whenusing consecutive forward selection, 5 QTL were identified above a threshold derived fromrandom permutations, accounting for 14.30 % of the phenotypic variance.Corresponding results for an identical workflow without phasing, unable to distinguishbetween founder alleles resulted in a total explainable variance of only 6.97 % for the 5highest ranking QTL, although not all of those were found significant.Conclusions. Using inferred phasing can greatly increase power and accuracy in multigenerationalQTL detection, at least when simple models are employed.14