Evaluation of a Fine-mapping Method Exploiting Linkage Disequilibrium in Livestock Populations: Simulation Study

A simulation study was conducted to evaluate a fine-mapping method exploiting population-wide linkage disequilibrium. Data were simulated according to the pedigree structure based on a large paternal half-sib family population with a total of 1,034 or 2,068 progeny. Twenty autosomes of 100 cM were generated with 5 cM or 1 cM marker intervals for all founder individuals in the pedigree, and marker alleles and a number of quantitative trait loci (QTL) explaining a total of 70% phenotypic variance were generated and randomly assigned across the whole chromosomes, assuming linkage equilibrium between the markers. The founder chromosomes were then descended through the pedigree to the current offspring generation, including recombinants that were generated by recombination between adjacent markers. Power to detect QTL was high for the QTL with at least moderate size, which was more pronounced with larger sample size and denser marker map. However, sample size contributed much more significantly to power to detect QTL than map density to the precise estimate of QTL position. No QTL was detected on the test chromosomes in which QTL was not assigned, which did not allow detection of false positive QTL. For the multiple QTL that were closely located, the estimates of the QTL positions were biased, except when the QTL were located on the right marker positions. Our fine mapping simulation results indicate that construction of dense maps and large sample size is needed to increase power to detect QTL and mapping precision for QTL position.