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

• Main Authors: Wen Huang, Trudy F C Mackay
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2016-11-01
• Series: PLoS Genetics
• Online Access: http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC5094750?pdf=render

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.