Assortative mating biases marker-based heritability estimators.
Nat Commun
; 13(1): 660, 2022 02 03.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-35115518
ABSTRACT
Many traits are subject to assortative mating, with recent molecular genetic findings confirming longstanding theoretical predictions that assortative mating induces long range dependence across causal variants. However, all marker-based heritability estimators implicitly assume mating is random. We provide mathematical and simulation-based evidence demonstrating that both method-of-moments and likelihood-based estimators are biased in the presence of assortative mating and derive corrected heritability estimators for traits subject to assortment. Finally, we demonstrate that the empirical patterns of estimates across methods and sample sizes for real traits subject to assortative mating are congruent with expected assortative mating-induced biases. For example, marker-based heritability estimates for height are 14% - 23% higher than corrected estimates using UK Biobank data.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Reproduction
/
Algorithms
/
Genetics, Population
/
Models, Genetic
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Limits:
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Language:
En
Journal:
Nat Commun
Journal subject:
BIOLOGIA
/
CIENCIA
Year:
2022
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
United States