Originally published as Genetics Published Articles Ahead of Print on June 4, 2006.

Genetics, Vol. 173, 2297-2316, August 2006, Copyright © 2006
doi:10.1534/genetics.105.049494

Influence of Mom and Dad: Quantitative Genetic Models for Maternal Effects and Genomic Imprinting

Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution, Department of Zoology, University of Otago, Dunedin, 9001 New Zealand

1 Corresponding author: Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution, Department of Zoology, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, 9001 New Zealand.
E-mail: asanture{at}gmail.com

The expression of an imprinted gene is dependent on the sex of the parent it was inherited from, and as a result reciprocal heterozygotes may display different phenotypes. In contrast, maternal genetic terms arise when the phenotype of an offspring is influenced by the phenotype of its mother beyond the direct inheritance of alleles. Both maternal effects and imprinting may contribute to resemblance between offspring of the same mother. We demonstrate that two standard quantitative genetic models for deriving breeding values, population variances and covariances between relatives, are not equivalent when maternal genetic effects and imprinting are acting. Maternal and imprinting effects introduce both sex-dependent and generation-dependent effects that result in differences in the way additive and dominance effects are defined for the two approaches. We use a simple example to demonstrate that both imprinting and maternal genetic effects add extra terms to covariances between relatives and that model misspecification may over- or underestimate true covariances or lead to extremely variable parameter estimation. Thus, an understanding of various forms of parental effects is essential in correctly estimating quantitative genetic variance components.




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