scholarly journals The genetic architecture of teosinte catalyzed and constrained maize domestication

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (12) ◽  
pp. 5643-5652 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chin Jian Yang ◽  
Luis Fernando Samayoa ◽  
Peter J. Bradbury ◽  
Bode A. Olukolu ◽  
Wei Xue ◽  
...  

The process of evolution under domestication has been studied using phylogenetics, population genetics–genomics, quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping, gene expression assays, and archaeology. Here, we apply an evolutionary quantitative genetic approach to understand the constraints imposed by the genetic architecture of trait variation in teosinte, the wild ancestor of maize, and the consequences of domestication on genetic architecture. Using modern teosinte and maize landrace populations as proxies for the ancestor and domesticate, respectively, we estimated heritabilities, additive and dominance genetic variances, genetic-by-environment variances, genetic correlations, and genetic covariances for 18 domestication-related traits using realized genomic relationships estimated from genome-wide markers. We found a reduction in heritabilities across most traits, and the reduction is stronger in reproductive traits (size and numbers of grains and ears) than vegetative traits. We observed larger depletion in additive genetic variance than dominance genetic variance. Selection intensities during domestication were weak for all traits, with reproductive traits showing the highest values. For 17 of 18 traits, neutral divergence is rejected, suggesting they were targets of selection during domestication. Yield (total grain weight) per plant is the sole trait that selection does not appear to have improved in maize relative to teosinte. From a multivariate evolution perspective, we identified a strong, nonneutral divergence between teosinte and maize landrace genetic variance–covariance matrices (G-matrices). While the structure of G-matrix in teosinte posed considerable genetic constraint on early domestication, the maize landrace G-matrix indicates that the degree of constraint is more unfavorable for further evolution along the same trajectory.

2021 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 14-22
Author(s):  
M. Orunmuyi ◽  
I. A. Adeyinka ◽  
O.O Oni

A study was conducted to estimate the genetic parameters of fertility and hatchability in two strains of Rhode Island Red (RIR) Chickens denoted as Strain A and Strain B respectively using the full-sib (sire +dam variance) and maternal half-sib (dam variance) components. The birds were obtained from the selected populations of RIR Chickens kept at the poultry breeding programme of National Animal Production Research Institute, Shika, Zaria, Nigeria. Settable eggs were collected from mating 28 cocks to 252 hens in a ratio of 1cock:9 hens from each strain. Eggs were pedigreed according to sire and dam. Results showed that values obtained for number of egg set (EGGSET), number of fertile eggs (NFERT), number of hatched chicks (NHATCH), percentage of chicks hatched from total eggs set (PHATCH) and percentage of chicks hatched from fertile eggs (PHATCHBL) were all higher in strain A than strain B. Heritability estimates obtained from the full-sib and maternal half-sib analysis ranged from medium to high for the two strains (0.24-0.96). The maternal half sib estimates were higher (0.40-0.96) than the estimates obtained from full sibs (0.24- 0.48). Genetic and phenotypic correlations obtained for both strains were positive and similar regardless of method of estimation. Genetic correlations between EGGSET and PFERT were low in strain A using both full-sib and maternal half-sib analyses (0.09-0.14). Phenotypic correlations between EGGSET and PFERT, PHATCH and PHATCHBL were also low in both strains and regardless of method of analyses. Moderate to high heritability estimates suggest that genetic improvement can be obtained by selection of these reproductive traits. The full-sib analysis for estimating heritability will be preferred since it is assumed that only additive genetic variance contributes to the covariance between family members.


1971 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 93 ◽  
Author(s):  
DM Hogarth

Two experiments in quantitative genetics were conducted, one based on a nested design in lattice squares and the other on a factorial design in a balanced lattice. Lattice designs were found to be suitable for genetic experiments if a large number of crosses was involved, but posed some problems in partitioning the sum of squares for treatments. The factorial design was considered preferable to the nested design, although neither design permitted estimation of epistatic variances which, therefore, were assumed to be negligible. Additive genetic variance was found to be more important than dominance genetic variance for most characters. However, most estimates of genetic variance lacked precision in spite of the use of large, precise experiments, which illustrated the difficulty in obtaining estimates of variance components with adequate precision. The validity of assumptions made for these analyses is discussed. The effect of competition was studied and estimates of heritability and degree of genetic determination were determined.


HortScience ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 881A-881
Author(s):  
Zhanyong Sun* ◽  
Richard L. Lower ◽  
Jack E. Staub

The incorporation of genes for parthenocarpy (production of fruit without fertilization) has potential for increasing yield in pickling cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.). The inheritance of parthenocarpy in cucumber is not well understood, and thus a genetic analysis was performed on F3 cross-progeny resulting from a mating between the processing cucumber inbred line 2A (P1, gynoecious, parthenocarpic, indeterminate, normal leaf) and Gy8 (P2, gynoecious, non-parthenocarpic, indeterminate, normal leaf). A variance component analysis was performed to fruit yield data collected at two locations (designated E-block and G-block) at Hancock, WI in 2000. The relative importance of additive genetic variance compared to dominance genetic variance changed across environments. The additive genetic variance was 0.5 and 4.3 times of dominance genetic variance in E-block and G-block, respectively. The estimated environmental variance accounted for ≈90% of the total phenotypic variance on an individual plant basis in both locations. Narrow-sense heritability estimated on an individual plant basis ranged from 0.04 (E-block) to 0.12 (G-block). Broad-sense heritability estimated on an individual plant basis ranged from 0.12 (E-block) to 0.15 (G-block). The minimum number of effective factors controlling parthenocarpy was estimated to range between 5 (G-block) to 13 (E-block). These results suggest that the response to direct selection of individual plants for improving parthenocarpy character will likely be slow and difficult. Experiment procedures that minimize the effect of environment on the expression of parthenocarpy will likely maximize the likelihood of gain from selection.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felipe M. W. Hickmann ◽  
José Braccini Neto ◽  
Luke M. Kramer ◽  
Yijian Huang ◽  
Kent A. Gray ◽  
...  

Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) is historically the most economically important swine disease worldwide that severely affects the reproductive performance of sows. However, little is still known about the genetic basis of reproductive performance in purebred herds during a PRRS outbreak through the comparison of maternal and terminal breeds. Thus, the objective of this work was to explore the host genetics of response to PRRS in purebred sows from two breeds. Reproductive data included 2546 Duroc and 2522 Landrace litters from 894 and 813 purebred sows, respectively, which had high-density genotype data available (29,799 single nucleotide polymorphisms; SNPs). The data were split into pre-PRRS, PRRS, and post-PRRS phases based on standardized farrow-year-week estimates. Heritability estimates for reproductive traits were low to moderate (≤0.20) for Duroc and Landrace across PRRS phases. On the other hand, genetic correlations of reproductive traits between PRRS phases were overall moderate to high for both breeds. Several associations between MARC0034894, a candidate SNP for response to PRRS, with reproductive performance were identified (P-value < 0.05). Genomic analyses detected few QTL for reproductive performance across all phases, most explaining a small percentage of the additive genetic variance (≤8.2%, averaging 2.1%), indicating that these traits are highly polygenic. None of the identified QTL within a breed and trait overlapped between PRRS phases. Overall, our results indicate that Duroc sows are phenotypically more resilient to PRRS than Landrace sows, with a similar return to PRRS-free performance between breeds for most reproductive traits. Genomic prediction results indicate that genomic selection for improved reproductive performance under a PRRS outbreak is possible, especially in Landrace sows, by training markers using data from PRRS-challenged sows. On the other hand, the high genetic correlations with reproductive traits between PRRS phases suggest that selection for improved reproductive performance in a clean environment could improve performance during PRRS, but with limited efficiency due to their low heritability estimates. Thus, we hypothesize that an indicator trait that could be indirectly selected to increase the response to selection for these traits would be desirable and would also improve the reproductive performance of sows during a PRRS outbreak.


Author(s):  
SPACE Lalit ◽  
Z. S. Malik ◽  
D. S. Dalal ◽  
C. S. Patil ◽  
S. P. Dahiya

Data on growth, reproduction and wool traits of 1603 Harnali sheep maintained at Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Hisar over a period of 22 years (1992-2013) were utilized for genetic analysis. The overall least squares mean for birth weight (BW), weaning weight (WW), six month body weight (SMW), age at first lambing (AFL), weight at lambing (WL), average lambing interval (ALI), greasy fleece weight (GFW), staple length (SL) and Fibre diameter (FD) were estimated as 3.35±0.02 kg, 12.41±0.08 kg, 16.30±0.12 kg, 707.05±2.07 days, 26.91±0.10 kg and 402.85±2.40 days, 1.62±0.02 kg, 5.65±0.03 cm and 25.85±0.07 μ, respectively. The effect of year of birth, sex of lamb and dam's weight at lambing were significant for all growth traits. The effect of year of birth and dam's weight at lambing were significant for all reproduction traits and GFW. No definite trend was observed over the years for body weights and reproductive traits. The effect of sex was significant for early growth traits. The heritability estimates were moderate for all the growth traits with high genetic correlations of BW and WW with SMW. Reproduction traits had lower estimates of heritability which indicated presence of lower additive genetic variance for these traits. Heritability estimates for studied wool traits were moderate to high. Positive genetic and phenotypic correlation of BW and WW with six month body weight and grease fleece weight indicated that selection for six month body weight would increase body weight and grease fleece weight.


2018 ◽  
Vol 156 (4) ◽  
pp. 565-569
Author(s):  
H. Ghiasi ◽  
R. Abdollahi-Arpanahi ◽  
M. Razmkabir ◽  
M. Khaldari ◽  
R. Taherkhani

AbstractThe aim of the current study was to estimate additive and dominance genetic variance components for days from calving to first service (DFS), a number of services to conception (NSC) and days open (DO). Data consisted of 25 518 fertility records from first parity dairy cows collected from 15 large Holstein herds of Iran. To estimate the variance components, two models, one including only additive genetic effects and another fitting both additive and dominance genetic effects together, were used. The additive and dominance relationship matrices were constructed using pedigree data. The estimated heritability for DFS, NSC and DO were 0.068, 0.035 and 0.067, respectively. The differences between estimated heritability using the additive genetic and additive-dominance genetic models were negligible regardless of the trait under study. The estimated dominance variance was larger than the estimated additive genetic variance. The ratio of dominance variance to phenotypic variance was 0.260, 0.231 and 0.196 for DFS, NSC and DO, respectively. Akaike's information criteria indicated that the model fitting both additive and dominance genetic effects is the best model for analysing DFS, NSC and DO. Spearman's rank correlations between the predicted breeding values (BV) from additive and additive-dominance models were high (0.99). Therefore, ranking of the animals based on predicted BVs was the same in both models. The results of the current study confirmed the importance of taking dominance variance into account in the genetic evaluation of dairy cows.


1982 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 141 ◽  
Author(s):  
L Pascoe

Fleece wettability in sheep is a character believed to be related to susceptibility to fleece rot and blowfly strike. The present study was undertaken to investigate that hypothesis and to assess wettability as a possible character for a selection program. Wool samples were taken from two flocks which had been subject to selection for wool quality and resistance to fleece rot and a third flock which was unselected. The wettabilities of about 800 samples were determined. The results were found to be repeatable and the technique was capable of distinguishing between sheep. Some problems of measurement are discussed. In the one flock with a significant incidence of fleece rot, susceptibility to fleece rot was found to be associated with higher wettabilities. The mean wettability and the variance were found to be significantly higher in the unselected flock than in the two selected flocks. The heritability of wettability was estimated in the two selected flocks and was found to be low. It is argued that there is likely to be more additive genetic variance in the unselected flock and that the observed difference in wettability was due to a correlated response to selection for resistance to fleece rot. It is considered that further work on the heritability of wettability and its genetic correlations with other characters of economic importance could be fruitful.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brechann V. McGoey ◽  
John R. Stinchcombe

AbstractInvasive species are a global economic and ecological problem. They also offer an opportunity to understand evolutionary processes in a colonizing context. The impacts of evolutionary factors, such as genetic variation, on the invasion process are increasingly appreciated but there remain gaps in the empirical literature. The adaptive potential of populations can be quantified using genetic variance-covariance matrices (G), which encapsulate the heritable genetic variance in a population. Here, we use a multivariate, Bayesian approach to assess the adaptive potential of introduced populations of ragweed, Ambrosia artemisiifolia, a serious allergen and agricultural weed. We compared several aspects of genetic architecture and the structure of G matrices between three native and three introduced populations, based on data collected in the field in a common garden experiment. We find moderate differences in the quantitative genetic architecture among populations, but we do not find that introduced populations suffer from a limited adaptive potential compared to native populations. Ragweed has an annual life history, is an obligate outcrosser, and produces billions of seeds and pollen grains per. These characteristics, combined with the significant additive genetic variance documented here, suggest ragweed will be able to respond quickly to selection pressures in both its native and introduced ranges.


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