CJO - Abstract - Linkage mapping of sex-specific differences

Genetics Research (2002), 79 : 85-96 Cambridge University Press

Copyright © 2002 Cambridge University Press

doi:10.1017/S0016672301005389

Published online by Cambridge University Press 02 Apr 2002

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Linkage mapping of sex-specific differences

RONGLING WU ^a1, CHANG-XING MA ^a1 ^a2, S. S. WU ^a1 ^c1 and ZHAO-BANG ZENG ^a3
^a1 Department of Statistics, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611 USA
^a2 Department of Statistics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China
^a3 Program in Statistical Genetics, Department of Statistics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA

Abstract

Most current linkage analyses assume identical fractions of meiotic recombination between homologous marker loci of the two sexes. This assumption is not realistic, because considerable sex-related differences have been observed in recombination fraction. In this paper, a general EM-based algorithm is presented to estimate sex-specific recombination fractions for a mixed set of molecular markers segregating differently in a full-sib family derived from two heterozygous parents. The asymptotic variances of the estimates of linkage specifically for each of the parents are evaluated using a numerical analysis based on information functions. This approach will have important implications for precise gene mapping based on sex-specific linkage maps.

(Received April 4 2001)
(Revised August 7 2001)

Correspondence:
^c1 Corresponding author. Tel: +1 352 392 3806. Fax: +1 352 392 8555. e-mail: rwu@stat.ufl.edu