title: Do Molecular Markers Inform About Pleiotropy?
abstract: The availability of dense panels of common single-nucleotide polymorphisms and sequence variants has facilitated the study of statistical features of the genetic architecture of complex traits and diseases via whole-genome regressions (WGRs). At the onset, traits were analyzed trait by trait, but recently, WGRs have been extended for analysis of several traits jointly. The expectation is that such an approach would offer insight into mechanisms that cause trait associations, such as pleiotropy. We demonstrate that correlation parameters inferred using markers can give a distorted picture of the genetic correlation between traits. In the absence of knowledge of linkage disequilibrium relationships between quantitative or disease trait loci and markers, speculating about genetic correlation and its causes (e.g., pleiotropy) using genomic data is conjectural.
authors.affiliation: Departments of Animal Sciences, Dairy Science, and Biostatistics and Medical Informatics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin 53706 Department of Plant Breeding, Technical University of Munich, Center for Life and Food Sciences, D-85354 Freising-Weihenstephan, Germany Institute of Advanced Study, Technical University of Munich, D-85748 Garching, Germany gianola@ansci.wisc.edu.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gianola
authors.affiliation: Department of Biostatistics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824.
authors.forename: Gustavo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: de los Campos
authors.affiliation: Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Agrónomos, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, 20840 Madrid, Spain.
authors.forename: Miguel A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Toro
authors.affiliation: Institut Pasteur de Montevideo, Mataojo 2020, Montevideo 11400, Uruguay.
authors.forename: Hugo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Naya
authors.affiliation: Department of Plant Breeding, Technical University of Munich, Center for Life and Food Sciences, D-85354 Freising-Weihenstephan, Germany Institute of Advanced Study, Technical University of Munich, D-85748 Garching, Germany.
authors.forename: Chris-Carolin
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Schön
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Sorensen
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D005819:Genetic Markers; D058685:Genetic Pleiotropy; D014644:Genetic Variation; D015894:Genome, Human; D006801:Humans; D015810:Linkage Disequilibrium; D008957:Models, Genetic; D040641:Quantitative Trait Loci
chemical_list: D005819:Genetic Markers
keywords: genetic correlation; genomic correlation; genomic heritability; linkage disequilibrium; pleiotropy