Junqueira Vinícius Silva, Lopes Paulo Sávio, Lourenco Daniela, Silva Fabyano Fonseca E, Cardoso Fernando Flores
Departamento de Zootecnia, Universidade Federal de Viçosa, Viçosa, Brazil.
Breeding Research Department, Bayer Crop Science, Uberlândia, Brazil.
Front Genet. 2020 Dec 3;11:556399. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2020.556399. eCollection 2020.
Pedigree information is incomplete by nature and commonly not well-established because many of the genetic ties are not known or can be wrong. The genomic era brought new opportunities to assess relationships between individuals. However, when pedigree and genomic information are used simultaneously, which is the case of single-step genomic BLUP (ssGBLUP), defining the genetic base is still a challenge. One alternative to overcome this challenge is to use metafounders, which are pseudo-individuals that describe the genetic relationship between the base population individuals. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of metafounders on the estimation of breeding values for tick resistance under ssGBLUP for a multibreed population composed by Hereford, Braford, and Zebu animals. Three different scenarios were studied: pedigree-based model (BLUP), ssGBLUP, and ssGBLUP with metafounders (ssGBLUPm). In ssGBLUPm, a total of four different metafounders based on breed of origin (i.e., Hereford, Braford, Zebu, and unknown) were included for the animals with missing parents. The relationship coefficient between metafounders was in average 0.54 (ranging from 0.34 to 0.96) suggesting an overlap between ancestor populations. The estimates of metafounder relationships indicate that Hereford and Zebu breeds have a possible common ancestral relationship. Inbreeding coefficients calculated following the metafounder approach had less negative values, suggesting that ancestral populations were large enough and that gametes inherited from the historical population were not identical. Variance components were estimated based on ssGBLUPm, ssGBLUP, and BLUP, but the values from ssGBLUPm were scaled to provide a fair comparison with estimates from the other two models. In general, additive, residual, and phenotypic variance components in the Hereford population were smaller than in Braford across different models. The addition of genomic information increased heritability for Hereford, possibly because of improved genetic relationships. As expected, genomic models had greater predictive ability, with an additional gain for ssGBLUPm over ssGBLUP. The increase in predictive ability was greater for Herefords. Our results show the potential of using metafounders to increase accuracy of GEBV, and therefore, the rate of genetic gain in beef cattle populations with partial levels of missing pedigree information.
系谱信息本质上是不完整的,而且通常难以完善,因为许多遗传关系并不明确或可能有误。基因组时代为评估个体间的关系带来了新机遇。然而,当同时使用系谱和基因组信息时(单步基因组最佳线性无偏预测法(ssGBLUP)就是这种情况),确定遗传基础仍然是一项挑战。克服这一挑战的一种方法是使用元奠基者,即描述基础群体个体间遗传关系的虚拟个体。本研究的目的是评估元奠基者对由赫里福德牛、布拉福德牛和瘤牛组成的多品种群体在ssGBLUP下蜱抗性育种值估计的影响。研究了三种不同的情况:基于系谱的模型(BLUP)、ssGBLUP以及带有元奠基者的ssGBLUP(ssGBLUPm)。在ssGBLUPm中,对于父母信息缺失的动物,总共纳入了基于起源品种(即赫里福德牛、布拉福德牛、瘤牛和未知品种)的四种不同元奠基者。元奠基者之间的相关系数平均为0.54(范围从0.34到0.96),这表明祖先群体之间存在重叠。元奠基者关系的估计表明,赫里福德牛和瘤牛品种可能存在共同的祖先关系。按照元奠基者方法计算的近交系数负值较小,这表明祖先群体足够大,并且从历史群体继承的配子并非完全相同。基于ssGBLUPm、ssGBLUP和BLUP估计了方差分量,但对ssGBLUPm的值进行了缩放,以便与其他两个模型的估计值进行公平比较。总体而言,在不同模型中,赫里福德牛群体的加性、残差和表型方差分量均小于布拉福德牛群体。基因组信息的加入提高了赫里福德牛群体的遗传力,这可能是由于遗传关系得到了改善。正如预期的那样,基因组模型具有更强的预测能力,与ssGBLUP相比,ssGBLUPm有额外的提升。赫里福德牛群体预测能力的提升更大。我们的结果表明,使用元奠基者有潜力提高基因组估计育种值的准确性,从而提高部分系谱信息缺失的肉牛群体的遗传进展速度。