title: Zygotic associations and multilocus statistics in a nonequilibrium diploid population.
abstract: The usual approach to characterizing and estimating multilocus associations in a diploid population assumes that the population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. The purpose of this study is to develop a set of summary statistics that can be used to characterize and estimate the multilocus associations in a nonequilibrium population. The concept of "zygotic associations" is first expanded to facilitate the development. The summary statistics are calculated using the distribution of a random variable, the number of heterozygous loci (K) found in diploid individuals in the population. In particular, the variance of K consists of single-locus and multilocus components with the latter being the sum of zygotic associations between pairs of loci. Simulation results show that the multilocus associations in the variance of K are detectable in a sample of moderate size (> or =30) when the sum of all pairwise zygotic associations is greater than zero and when gene frequency is intermediate. The method presented here is a generalization of the well-known development for the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium population and thus may be of more general use in elucidating the multilocus organizations in nonequilibrium and equilibrium populations.
authors.affiliation: Research Division, Alberta Agriculture, Food and Rural Development, Edmonton, Alberta T6H 5T6, Canada. rongcai.yang@agric.gov.ab.ca
authors.forename: R C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Yang
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001419:Bacteria / Q000235:genetics; D004171:Diploidy; D005787:Gene Frequency; D005828:Genetics, Population; D005838:Genotype; D006579:Heterozygote; D015810:Linkage Disequilibrium; D008957:Models, Genetic; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009716:Numerical Analysis, Computer-Assisted; D010944:Plants / Q000235:genetics; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D015053:Zygote