title: Bayesian model selection for characterizing genomic imprinting effects and patterns.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Although imprinted genes have been ubiquitously observed in nature, statistical methodology still has not been systematically developed for jointly characterizing genomic imprinting effects and patterns. To detect imprinting genes influencing quantitative traits, the least square and maximum likelihood approaches for fitting a single quantitative trait loci (QTL) and Bayesian method for simultaneously modeling multiple QTLs have been adopted in various studies.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In a widely used F(2) reciprocal mating population for mapping imprinting genes, we herein propose a genomic imprinting model which describes additive, dominance and imprinting effects of multiple imprinted quantitative trait loci (iQTL) for traits of interest. Depending upon the estimates of the above genetic effects, we categorized imprinting patterns into seven types, which provides a complete classification scheme for describing imprinting patterns. Bayesian model selection was employed to identify iQTL along with many genetic parameters in a computationally efficient manner. To make statistical inference on the imprinting types of iQTL detected, a set of Bayes factors were formulated using the posterior probabilities for the genetic effects being compared. We demonstrated the performance of the proposed method by computer simulation experiments and then applied this method to two real datasets. Our approach can be generally used to identify inheritance modes and determine the contribution of major genes for quantitative variations.
authors.affiliation: School of Agriculture and Biology, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai 200240, China. runqingyang@sjtu.edu.cn
authors.forename: Runqing
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Zeyuan
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Daniel R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Prows
authors.forename: Min
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lin
mesh_terms: D001499:Bayes Theorem; D003198:Computer Simulation; D018392:Genomic Imprinting; D040641:Quantitative Trait Loci