Quantitative trait locus mapping analysis of multiple traits when using genotype data with potential errors

Abstract

Background Quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis aims to locate and estimate the effects of the genes influencing quantitative traits and infer the relationship between gene variants and changes in phenotypic characteristics using statistical methods. Some methods have been developed to map QTLs of multiple traits in the case of no genotype error in a given dataset. However, practical genetic data that people use may contain some potential errors because of the limitations of biotechnology. Common genetic data correction methods can only reduce errors, but cannot calculate the degree of error. In this paper, we propose a QTL mapping strategy for multiple traits in the presence of genotype errors. Methods The additive effect, dominant effect, recombination rate, error rate, and other parameters of QTLs can be simultaneously obtained using this new method in the framework of multiple-interval mapping. Results Our simulation results show that the accuracy of parameter estimation can be improved by considering the errors of marker genotypes during the analysis of genetic data. Real data analysis also shows that the new method proposed in this paper can map the QTLs of multiple traits more accurately.

Keywords

• EM algorithm
• Error rate
• Multiple-interval mapping
• Multiple traits
• QTL
• Recombination rate