title: Estimation and testing of parent-of-origin effects for quantitative traits.
abstract: Recent progress in developing family-based association methods has extended their use to the analysis of quantitative traits in the offspring and to the estimation, for dichotomous traits, of the relative contribution of genetic and environmental mechanisms for parent-of-origin effects. However, many traits of interest are not naturally measured on a binary scale yet are suspected or known to be influenced by imprinted genes, and there is consequent interest in seeking evidence for parent-of-origin effects at these loci. Here we show how simple linear models can be used to estimate these parent-of-origin effects for a broad class of phenotypes; in particular, normally distributed quantitative traits are easily dealt with.
authors.affiliation: Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University College London, London, United Kingdom. j.whittaker@ic.ac.uk
authors.forename: John C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Whittaker
authors.forename: Neda
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Gharani
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hindmarsh
authors.forename: Mark I
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: McCarthy
mesh_terms: D005260:Female; D018392:Genomic Imprinting; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008957:Models, Genetic; D015233:Models, Statistical; D010290:Parents; D040641:Quantitative Trait Loci; D035781:Siblings