Originally published as Genetics Published Articles Ahead of Print on June 18, 2005.

Genetics, Vol. 171, 251-258, September 2005, Copyright © 2005
doi:10.1534/genetics.105.040972

Modeling Linkage Disequilibrium in Natural Populations: The Example of the Soay Sheep Population of St. Kilda, Scotland

Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH9 3JT, United Kingdom

1 Corresponding author: Institute of Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh, W. Mains Rd., Edinburgh EH9 3JT, United Kingdom.
E-mail: a.mcrae{at}ed.ac.uk

The use of linkage disequilibrium to localize the genes underlying quantitative traits has received considerable attention in the livestock genetics community over the past few years. This has resulted in the investigation of linkage disequilibrium structures of several domestic livestock populations to assess their potential use in fine-mapping efforts. However, the linkage disequilibrium structure of free-living populations has been less well investigated. As the direct evaluation of linkage disequilibrium can be both time consuming and expensive the use of simulations that include as many aspects of population history as possible is advocated as an alternative. A simulation of the linkage disequilibrium structure of the Soay sheep population of St. Kilda, Scotland, is provided as an example. The simulated population showed significant decline of linkage disequilibrium with genetic distance and low levels of background linkage disequilibrium, indicating that the Soay sheep population is a viable resource for linkage disequilibrium fine mapping of quantitative trait loci.




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