RESUMEN
The correlation between alleles at a pair of genetic loci is a measure of linkage disequilibrium. The square of the sample correlation multiplied by sample size provides the usual test statistic for the hypothesis of no disequilibrium for loci with two alleles and this relation has proved useful for study design and marker selection. Nevertheless, this relation holds only in a diallelic case, and an extension to multiple alleles has not been made. Here we introduce a similar statistic, R2, which leads to a correlation-based test for loci with multiple alleles: for a pair of loci with k and m alleles, and a sample of n individuals, the approximate distribution of n(k - 1)(m - 1)/(km)R2 under independence between loci is chi2(k-1(m-1). One advantage of this statistic is that it can be interpreted as the total correlation between a pair of loci. When the phase of two-locus genotypes is known, the approach is equivalent to a test for the overall correlation between rows and columns in a contingency table. In the phase-known case, R2 is the sum of the squared sample correlations for all km 2 x 2 subtables formed by collapsing to one allele vs. the rest at each locus. We examine the approximate distribution under the null of independence for R2 and report its close agreement with the exact distribution obtained by permutation. The test for independence using R2 is a strong competitor to approaches such as Pearson's chi square, Fisher's exact test, and a test based on Cressie and Read's power divergence statistic. We combine this approach with our previous composite-disequilibrium measures to address the case when the genotypic phase is unknown. Calculation of the new multiallele test statistic and its P-value is very simple and utilizes the approximate distribution of R2. We provide a computer program that evaluates approximate as well as "exact" permutational P-values.
Asunto(s)
Alelos , Desequilibrio de Ligamiento , Animales , Mapeo Cromosómico , Frecuencia de los Genes , Genotipo , Haplotipos , Humanos , Modelos Genéticos , Modelos Estadísticos , Modelos Teóricos , Método de Montecarlo , Polimorfismo de Nucleótido Simple , Programas Informáticos , Procesos EstocásticosRESUMEN
The program "Nb_HetEx" estimates the effective number of breeders (N(b)) that produced the sampled progeny based on genotype counts contained in that sample. When the number of breeders is very small, there is an excess of heterozygotes in their progeny: the smaller the number of breeders, the larger the heterozygote excess. The Nb_HetEx program also estimates N(e) through the temporal method.