scholarly journals Digest: Indirect genetic effects of males on female reproductive traits in the wild*

Evolution ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 74 (10) ◽  
pp. 2421-2422
Author(s):  
Eve B. Cooper
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziwei Chen ◽  
Luiz F. Brito ◽  
Hanpeng Luo ◽  
Rui Shi ◽  
Yao Chang ◽  
...  

Fertility and reproductive performance are key drivers of dairy farm profitability. Hence, reproduction traits have been included in a large majority of worldwide dairy cattle selection indexes. The reproductive traits are lowly heritable but can be improved through direct genetic selection. However, most scientific studies and dairy cattle breeding programs have focused solely on the genetic effects of the dam (GED) on reproductive performance and, therefore, ignored the contribution of the service sire in the phenotypic outcomes. This study aimed to investigate the service sire effects on female reproductive traits in Holstein cattle from a genomic perspective. Genetic parameter estimation and genome-wide association studies (GWAS) were performed for the genetic effect of service sire (GESS) on conception rate (CR), 56-day non-return rate (NRR56), calving ease (CE), stillbirth (SB), and gestation length (GL). Our findings indicate that the additive genetic effects of both sire and dam contribute to the phenotypic variance of reproductive traits measured in females (0.0196 vs. 0.0109, 0.0237 vs. 0.0133, 0.0040 vs. 0.0289, 0.0782 vs. 0.0083, and 0.1024 vs. 0.1020 for GESS and GED heritability estimates for CR, NRR56, CE, SB, and GL, respectively), and these two genetic effects are positively correlated for SB (0.1394) and GL (0.7871). Interestingly, the breeding values for GESS on insemination success traits (CR and NRR56) are unfavorably and significantly correlated with some production, health, and type breeding values (ranging from −0.449 to 0.274), while the GESS values on calving traits (CE, SB, and GL) are usually favorably associated with those traits (ranging from −0.493 to 0.313). One hundred sixty-two significant single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and their surrounding protein-coding genes were identified as significantly associated with GESS and GED, respectively. Six genes overlapped between GESS and GED for calving traits and 10 genes overlapped between GESS for success traits and calving traits. Our findings indicate the importance of considering the GESS when genetically evaluating the female reproductive traits in Holstein cattle.


Reproduction ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 155 (4) ◽  
pp. R159-R168 ◽  
Author(s):  
R C Vaught ◽  
D K Dowling

Evolutionary theory predicts maternal inheritance of the mitochondria will lead to the accumulation of mutations in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) that impair male fertility, but leave females unaffected. The hypothesis has been referred to as ‘Mother’s Curse’. There are many examples of mtDNA mutations or haplotypes, in humans and other metazoans, associated with decreases in sperm performance, but seemingly few reports of associations involving female reproductive traits; an observation that has been used to support the Mother’s Curse hypothesis. However, it is unclear whether apparent signatures of male bias in mitochondrial genetic effects on fertility reflect an underlying biological bias or a technical bias resulting from a lack of studies to have screened for female effects. Here, we conduct a systematic literature search of studies reporting mitochondrial genetic effects on fertility-related traits in gonochoristic metazoans (animals with two distinct sexes). Studies of female reproductive outcomes were sparse, reflecting a large technical sex bias across the literature. We were only able to make a valid assessment of sex specificity of mitochondrial genetic effects in 30% of cases. However, in most of these cases, the effects were male biased, including examples of male bias associated with mtDNA mutations in humans. These results are therefore consistent with the hypothesis that maternal inheritance has enriched mtDNA sequences with mutations that specifically impair male fertility. However, future research that redresses the technical imbalance in studies conducted per sex will be key to enabling researchers to fully assess the wider implications of the Mother’s Curse hypothesis to male reproductive biology.


Evolution ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (5) ◽  
pp. 1232-1245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucas Marie-Orleach ◽  
Nadja Vogt-Burri ◽  
Pierick Mouginot ◽  
Aline Schlatter ◽  
Dita B. Vizoso ◽  
...  

2000 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Sewalem ◽  
K. Johansson

AbstractFertility, generally considered as a trait of the two parents, is perhaps best defined as the interaction between the male and female gametes in the production of a viable zygote. Although zygote development and hatchability are traits of the embryo influenced by maternal effects, in most previous studies they have been considered to be female reproductive traits. The aim of this work was to study the influence of sire on fertility and hatchability traits and to estimate the (co)variance components of direct and maternal genetic effects under a Bayesian setting via Gibbs sampling. We measured the fertility of 6396 eggs and the hatchability of 5393 embryos on an individual basis. In addition, egg weight from 42 to 63 weeks of age (EW63) was recorded on an individual egg basis. The sire accounted for a significant amount of the variation infertility and hatchability. For direct heritability, the marginal posterior mean, for fertility and hatchability were almost equal (0·24). The maternal heritabilities for fertility and hatchability were 0·20 and 0·18, respectively. The direct heritability value for the egg weight trait was high. The direct-direct genetic correlation between egg weight and hatchability was negative and significant. The genetic correlations between the direct effect of the egg weight trait and maternal effects for fertility and hatchability were low, with variable signs, and were not significant. On the other hand, significant negative genetic correlations between direct and maternal effects of fertility and hatchability were obtained (the posterior means were –0·56 for FE and –0·55 for HC).


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 1692-1701 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Genung ◽  
Joseph K. Bailey ◽  
Jennifer A. Schweitzer

PLoS ONE ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. e65136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene Camerlink ◽  
Simon P. Turner ◽  
Piter Bijma ◽  
J. Elizabeth Bolhuis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurence Howe ◽  
David Evans ◽  
Gibran Hemani ◽  
George Davey Smith ◽  
Neil Martin Davies

Estimating effects of parental and sibling genotypes (indirect genetic effects) can provide insight into how the family environment influences phenotypic variation. There is growing molecular genetic evidence for effects of parental phenotypes on their offspring (e.g. parental educational attainment), but the extent to which siblings affect each other is currently unclear.Here we used data from samples of unrelated individuals, without (singletons) and with biological full-siblings (non-singletons), to investigate and estimate sibling effects. Indirect genetic effects of siblings increase (or decrease) the covariance between genetic variation and a phenotype. It follows that differences in genetic association estimates between singletons and non-singletons could indicate indirect genetic effects of siblings.We used UK Biobank data to estimate polygenic risk score (PRS) associations for height, BMI and educational attainment in singletons (N = 50,143) and non-singletons (N = 328,549). The educational attainment PRS association estimate was 12% larger (95% C.I. 3%, 21%) in the non-singleton sample than in the singleton sample, but the height and BMI PRS associations were consistent. Birth order data suggested that the difference in educational attainment PRS associations was driven by individuals with older siblings rather than firstborns. The relationship between number of siblings and educational attainment PRS associations was non-linear; PRS associations were 24% smaller in individuals with 6 or more siblings compared to the rest of the sample (95% C.I. 11%, 38%). We estimate that a 1 SD increase in sibling educational attainment PRS corresponds to a 0.025 year increase in the index individual’s years in schooling (95% C.I. 0.013, 0.036).Our results suggest that older siblings influence the educational attainment of younger siblings, adding to the growing evidence that effects of the environment on phenotypic variation partially reflect social effects of germline genetic variation in relatives.


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