Accounting for genetic architecture in single‐ and multipopulation genomic prediction using weights from genomewide association studies in pigs

We studied the effect of including GWAS results on the accuracy of single‐ and multipopulation genomic predictions. Phenotypes (backfat thickness) and genotypes of animals from two sire lines (SL1, n = 1146 and SL3, n = 1264) were used in the analyses. First, GWAS were conducted for each line and for a combined data set (both lines together) to estimate the genetic variance explained by each SNP. These estimates were used to build matrices of weights (D), which was incorporated into a GBLUP method. Single population evaluated with traditional GBLUP had accuracies of 0.30 for SL1 and 0.31 for SL3. When weights were employed in GBLUP, the accuracies for both lines increased (0.32 for SL1 and 0.34 for SL3). When a multipopulation reference set was used in GBLUP, the accuracies were higher (0.36 for SL1 and 0.32 for SL3) than in single‐population prediction. In addition, putting together the multipopulation reference set and the weights from the combined GWAS provided even higher accuracies (0.37 for SL1, and 0.34 for SL3). The use of multipopulation predictions and weights estimated from a combined GWAS increased the accuracy of genomic predictions.     

Effect of selection and selective genotyping for creation of reference on bias and accuracy of genomic prediction

Reference populations for genomic selection usually involve selected individuals, which may result in biased prediction of estimated genomic breeding values (GEBV). In a simulation study, bias and accuracy of GEBV were explored for various genetic models with individuals selectively genotyped in a typical nucleus breeding program. We compared the performance of three existing methods, that is, Best Linear Unbiased Prediction of breeding values using pedigree‐based relationships (PBLUP), genomic relationships for genotyped animals only (GBLUP) and a Single‐Step approach (SSGBLUP) using both. For a scenario with no‐selection and random mating (RR), prediction was unbiased. However, lower accuracy and bias were observed for scenarios with selection and random mating (SR) or selection and positive assortative mating (SA). As expected, bias disappeared when all individuals were genotyped and used in GBLUP. SSGBLUP showed higher accuracy compared to GBLUP, and bias of prediction was negligible with SR. However, PBLUP and SSGBLUP still showed bias in SA due to high inbreeding. SSGBLUP and PBLUP were unbiased provided that inbreeding was accounted for in the relationship matrices. Selective genotyping based on extreme phenotypic contrasts increased the prediction accuracy, but prediction was biased when using GBLUP. SSGBLUP could correct the biasedness while gaining higher accuracy than GBLUP. In a typical animal breeding program, where it is too expensive to genotype all animals, it would be appropriate to genotype phenotypically contrasting selection candidates and use a Single‐Step approach to obtain accurate and unbiased prediction of GEBV.     

Genomic prediction in a numerically small breed population using prioritized genetic markers from whole-genome sequence data

The objective of this study was to investigate the accuracy of genomic prediction of body weight and eating quality traits in a numerically small sheep population (Dorper sheep). Prediction was based on a large multi-breed/admixed reference population and using (a) 50k or 500k single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotypes, (b) imputed whole-genome sequencing data (~31 million), (c) selected SNPs from whole genome sequence data and (d) 50k SNP genotypes plus selected SNPs from whole-genome sequence data. Furthermore, the impact of using a breed-adjusted genomic relationship matrix on accuracy of genomic breeding value was assessed. The selection of genetic variants was based on an association study performed on imputed whole-genome sequence data in an independent population, which was chosen either randomly from the base population or according to higher genetic proximity to the target population. Genomic prediction was based on genomic best linear unbiased prediction (GBLUP), and the accuracy of genomic prediction was assessed according to the correlation between genomic breeding value and corrected phenotypes divided by the square root of trait heritability. The accuracy of genomic prediction was between 0.20 and 0.30 across different traits based on common 50k SNP genotypes, which improved on average by 0.06 (absolute value) on average based on using prioritized genetic markers from whole-genome sequence data. Using prioritized genetic markers from a genetically more related GWAS population resulted in slightly higher prediction accuracy (0.02 absolute value) compared to genetic markers derived from a random GWAS population. Using high-density SNP genotypes or imputed whole-genome sequence data in GBLUP showed almost no improvement in genomic prediction accuracy however, accounting for different marker allele frequencies in reference population according to a breed-adjusted GRM resulted to on average 0.024 (absolute value) increase in accuracy of genomic prediction.     

Core-dependent changes in genomic predictions using the Algorithm for Proven and Young in single-step genomic best linear unbiased prediction

Single-step genomic best linear unbiased prediction with the Algorithm for Proven and Young (APY) is a popular method for large-scale genomic evaluations. With the APY algorithm, animals are designated as core or noncore, and the computing resources to create the inverse of the genomic relationship matrix (GRM) are reduced by inverting only a portion of that matrix for core animals. However, using different core sets of the same size causes fluctuations in genomic estimated breeding values (GEBVs) up to one additive standard deviation without affecting prediction accuracy. About 2% of the variation in the GRM is noise. In the recursion formula for APY, the error term modeling the noise is different for every set of core animals, creating changes in breeding values. While average changes are small, and correlations between breeding values estimated with different core animals are close to 1.0, based on the normal distribution theory, outliers can be several times bigger than the average. Tests included commercial datasets from beef and dairy cattle and from pigs. Beyond a certain number of core animals, the prediction accuracy did not improve, but fluctuations decreased with more animals. Fluctuations were much smaller than the possible changes based on prediction error variance. GEBVs change over time even for animals with no new data as genomic relationships ties all the genotyped animals, causing reranking of top animals. In contrast, changes in nongenomic models without new data are small. Also, GEBV can change due to details in the model, such as redefinition of contemporary groups or unknown parent groups. In particular, increasing the fraction of blending of the GRM with a pedigree relationship matrix from 5% to 20% caused changes in GEBV up to 0.45 SD, with a correlation of GEBV > 0.99. Fluctuations in genomic predictions are part of genomic evaluation models and are also present without the APY algorithm when genomic evaluations are computed with updated data. The best approach to reduce the impact of fluctuations in genomic evaluations is to make selection decisions not on individual animals with limited individual accuracy but on groups of animals with high average accuracy.     

Assessment of bagging GBLUP for whole‐genome prediction of broiler chicken traits

Bootstrap aggregation (bagging) is a resampling method known to produce more accurate predictions when predictors are unstable or when the number of markers is much larger than sample size, because of variance reduction capabilities. The purpose of this study was to compare genomic best linear unbiased prediction (GBLUP) with bootstrap aggregated sampling GBLUP (Bagged GBLUP, or BGBLUP) in terms of prediction accuracy. We used a 600 K Affymetrix platform with 1351 birds genotyped and phenotyped for three traits in broiler chickens; body weight, ultrasound measurement of breast muscle and hen house egg production. The predictive performance of GBLUP versus BGBLUP was evaluated in different scenarios consisting of including or excluding the TOP 20 markers from a standard genome‐wide association study (GWAS) as fixed effects in the GBLUP model, and varying training sample sizes and allelic frequency bins. Predictive performance was assessed via five replications of a threefold cross‐validation using the correlation between observed and predicted values, and prediction mean‐squared error. GBLUP overfitted the training set data, and BGBLUP delivered a better predictive ability in testing sets. Treating the TOP 20 markers from the GWAS into the model as fixed effects improved prediction accuracy and added advantages to BGBLUP over GBLUP. The performance of GBLUP and BGBLUP at different allele frequency bins and training sample sizes was similar. In general, results of this study confirm that BGBLUP can be valuable for enhancing genome‐enabled prediction of complex traits.     

Detecting effective starting point of genomic selection by divergent trends from best linear unbiased prediction and single-step genomic best linear unbiased prediction in pigs,beef cattle,and broilers

Genomic selection has been adopted nationally and internationally in different livestock and plant species. However, understanding whether genomic selection has been effective or not is an essential question for both industry and academia. Once genomic evaluation started being used, estimation of breeding values with pedigree best linear unbiased prediction (BLUP) became biased because this method does not consider selection using genomic information. Hence, the effective starting point of genomic selection can be detected in two possible ways including the divergence of genetic trends and Realized Mendelian sampling (RMS) trends obtained with BLUP and single-step genomic BLUP (ssGBLUP). This study aimed to find the start date of genomic selection for a set of economically important traits in three livestock species by comparing trends obtained using BLUP and ssGBLUP. Three datasets were used for this purpose: 1) a pig dataset with 117k genotypes and 1.3M animals in pedigree, 2) an Angus cattle dataset consisted of ~842k genotypes and 11.5M animals in pedigree, and 3) a purebred broiler chicken dataset included ~154k genotypes and 1.3M birds in pedigree were used. The genetic trends for pigs diverged for the genotyped animals born in 2014 for average daily gain (ADG) and backfat (BF). In beef cattle, the trends started diverging in 2009 for weaning weight (WW) and in 2016 for postweaning gain (PWG), with little divergence for birth weight (BTW). In broiler chickens, the genetic trends estimated by ssGBLUP and BLUP diverged at breeding cycle 6 for two out of the three production traits. The RMS trends for the genotyped pigs diverged for animals born in 2014, more for ADG than for BF. In beef cattle, the RMS trends started diverging in 2009 for WW and in 2016 for PWG, with a trivial trend for BTW. In broiler chickens, the RMS trends from ssGBLUP and BLUP diverged strongly for two production traits at breeding cycle 6, with a slight divergence for another trait. Divergence of the genetic trends from ssGBLUP and BLUP indicates the onset of the genomic selection. The presence of trends for RMS indicates selective genotyping, with or without the genomic selection. The onset of genomic selection and genotyping strategies agrees with industry practices across the three species. In summary, the effective start of genomic selection can be detected by the divergence between genetic and RMS trends from BLUP and ssGBLUP.     

结合GWAS先验标记信息的肉鸡RFI性状全基因组选择研究

旨在比较结合全基因组关联分析（genome-wide association study,GWAS）先验标记信息的基因组育种值（genomic estimated breeding value,GEBV）估计与基因组最佳线性无偏预测（genomic best linear unbiased prediction,GBLUP）方法对鸡剩余采食量性状育种值估计的准确性,为提高基因组选择准确性提供理论与技术支持。本研究选用广西金陵花鸡3个世代共2 510个个体作为素材,其中公鸡1 648只,母鸡862只,以42～56日龄期间的剩余采食量（residual feed intake,RFI）为目标性状,将试验群体随机分为两组,其中一组作为先验标记信息发现群体,用于GWAS分析并筛选最显著的top5%、top10%、top15%和top20%的位点作为先验标记信息;另外一组分别结合不同的先验标记信息进行遗传参数估计并比较基因组育种值的预测准确性,使用重复10次的五倍交叉验证法获取准确性,随后两组群体再进行交叉验证。研究结果表明,GBLUP计算RFI的遗传力为0.153,预测准确性为0.387～0.429,结合GWAS先验标记信息的基因组选择方法计算RFI的遗传力为0.139～0.157,预测准确性为0.401～0.448。将GWAS结果中P值最显著的top10%～top15%的SNPs作为先验信息整合至基因组选择模型中可以将RFI的预测准确性提升2.10%～5.17%。     

Mixture models detect large effect QTL better than GBLUP and result in more accurate and persistent predictions

Background: Accurate evaluation of SNP effects is important for genome wide association studies and for genomic prediction. The genetic architecture of quantitative traits differs widely, with some traits exhibiting few if any quantitative trait loci(QTL) with large effects, while other traits have one or several easily detectable QTL with large effects.Methods: Body weight in broilers and egg weight in layers are two examples of traits that have QTL of large effect.A commonly used method for genome wide association studies is to fit a mixture model such as Bayes B that assumes some known proportion of SNP effects are zero. In contrast, the most commonly used method for genomic prediction is known as GBLUP, which involves fitting an animal model to phenotypic data with the variance-covariance or genomic relationship matrix among the animals being determined by genome wide SNP genotypes. Genotypes at each SNP are typically weighted equally in determining the genomic relationship matrix for GBLUP. We used the equivalent marker effects model formulation of GBLUP for this study. We compare these two classes of models using egg weight data collected over 8 generations from 2,324 animals genotyped with a42 K SNP panel.Results: Using data from the first 7 generations, both Bayes B and GBLUP found the largest QTL in a similar well-recognized QTL region, but this QTL was estimated to account for 24 % of genetic variation with Bayes B and less than 1 % with GBLUP. When predicting phenotypes in generation 8 Bayes B accounted for 36 % of the phenotypic variation and GBLUP for 25 %. When using only data from any one generation, the same QTL was identified with Bayes B in all but one generation but never with GBLUP. Predictions of phenotypes in generations 2 to 7 based on only 295 animals from generation 1 accounted for 10 % phenotypic variation with Bayes B but only6 % with GBLUP. Predicting phenotype using only the marker effects in the 1 Mb region that accounted for the largest effect on egg weight from generation 1 data alone accounted for almost 8 % variation using Bayes B but had no predictive power with GBLUP.Conclusions: In conclusion, In the presence of large effect QTL, Bayes B did a better job of QTL detection and its genomic predictions were more accurate and persistent than those from GBLUP.     

Genotyping strategies of selection candidates in livestock breeding programmes

Benefits of genomic selection (GS) in livestock breeding operations are well known particularly where traits are sex‐limited, hard to measure, have a low heritability and/or measured later in life. Sheep and beef breeders have a higher cost:benefit ratio for GS compared to dairy. Therefore, strategies for genotyping selection candidates should be explored to maximize the economic benefit of GS. The aim of the paper was to investigate, via simulation, the additional genetic gain achieved by selecting proportions of male selection candidates to be genotyped via truncation selection. A two‐trait selection index was used that contained an easy and early‐in‐life measurement (such as post‐weaning weight) as well as a hard‐to‐measure trait (such as intra‐muscular fat). We also evaluated the optimal proportion of female selection candidates to be genotyped in breeding programmes using natural mating and/or artificial insemination (NatAI), multiple ovulation and embryo transfer (MOET) or juvenile in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer (JIVET). The final aim of the project was to investigate the total dollars spent to increase the genetic merit by one genetic standard deviation (SD) using GS and/or reproductive technologies. For NatAI and MOET breeding programmes, females were selected to have progeny by 2 years of age, while 1‐month‐old females were required for JIVET. Genomic testing the top 20% of male selection candidates achieved 80% of the maximum benefit from GS when selection of male candidates prior to genomic testing had an accuracy of 0.36, while 54% needed to be tested to get the same benefit when the prior selection accuracy was 0.11. To achieve 80% of the maximum benefit in female, selection required 66%, 47% and 56% of female selection candidates to be genotyped in NatAI, MOET and JIVET breeding programmes, respectively. While JIVET and MOET breeding programmes achieved the highest annual genetic gain, genotyping male selection candidates provides the most economical way to increase rates of genetic gain facilitated by genomic testing.     

Genotyping of groups of cows to improve genomic breeding values of new traits

Genotyping females and including them into the reference set for genomic predictions in dairy cattle is considered to provide gains in reliabilities of estimated breeding values for selection candidates. This should especially be true for low heritability traits. By the use of simulation, we extended a genomic reference set for an existing trait by including a fixed number of genotyped first‐crop daughters for one or two generations of reference sires. Moreover, we calculated results for the effects of a similar strategy in a situation where for a new trait the recording of phenotypes has recently started. For this case, we compared the effect of two different genotyping strategies: first, to phenotype cows but to genotype their sires only, and second, to collect phenotypes and genotypes on the same cows. We studied the effects on validation reliabilities and unbiasedness of predicted values for selection candidates. We found that by extending the reference set with genotyped daughters it is possible to increase the validation reliability of genomic breeding values. In the case of a new trait, it is always better to collect and use genotypes and phenotypes on the same animals instead of using only sire genotypes. We found that the benefits that can be achieved are sensitive to the sampling strategy used when selecting females for genotyping.     

Impact of fitting dominance and additive effects on accuracy of genomic prediction of breeding values in layers

Most genomic prediction studies fit only additive effects in models to estimate genomic breeding values (GEBV). However, if dominance genetic effects are an important source of variation for complex traits, accounting for them may improve the accuracy of GEBV. We investigated the effect of fitting dominance and additive effects on the accuracy of GEBV for eight egg production and quality traits in a purebred line of brown layers using pedigree or genomic information (42K single‐nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) panel). Phenotypes were corrected for the effect of hatch date. Additive and dominance genetic variances were estimated using genomic‐based [genomic best linear unbiased prediction (GBLUP)‐REML and BayesC] and pedigree‐based (PBLUP‐REML) methods. Breeding values were predicted using a model that included both additive and dominance effects and a model that included only additive effects. The reference population consisted of approximately 1800 animals hatched between 2004 and 2009, while approximately 300 young animals hatched in 2010 were used for validation. Accuracy of prediction was computed as the correlation between phenotypes and estimated breeding values of the validation animals divided by the square root of the estimate of heritability in the whole population. The proportion of dominance variance to total phenotypic variance ranged from 0.03 to 0.22 with PBLUP‐REML across traits, from 0 to 0.03 with GBLUP‐REML and from 0.01 to 0.05 with BayesC. Accuracies of GEBV ranged from 0.28 to 0.60 across traits. Inclusion of dominance effects did not improve the accuracy of GEBV, and differences in their accuracies between genomic‐based methods were small (0.01–0.05), with GBLUP‐REML yielding higher prediction accuracies than BayesC for egg production, egg colour and yolk weight, while BayesC yielded higher accuracies than GBLUP‐REML for the other traits. In conclusion, fitting dominance effects did not impact accuracy of genomic prediction of breeding values in this population.     

Improving accuracy of genomic prediction in Brangus cattle by adding animals with imputed low‐density SNP genotypes

Reliable genomic prediction of breeding values for quantitative traits requires the availability of sufficient number of animals with genotypes and phenotypes in the training set. As of 31 October 2016, there were 3,797 Brangus animals with genotypes and phenotypes. These Brangus animals were genotyped using different commercial SNP chips. Of them, the largest group consisted of 1,535 animals genotyped by the GGP‐LDV4 SNP chip. The remaining 2,262 genotypes were imputed to the SNP content of the GGP‐LDV4 chip, so that the number of animals available for training the genomic prediction models was more than doubled. The present study showed that the pooling of animals with both original or imputed 40K SNP genotypes substantially increased genomic prediction accuracies on the ten traits. By supplementing imputed genotypes, the relative gains in genomic prediction accuracies on estimated breeding values (EBV) were from 12.60% to 31.27%, and the relative gain in genomic prediction accuracies on de‐regressed EBV was slightly small (i.e. 0.87%–18.75%). The present study also compared the performance of five genomic prediction models and two cross‐validation methods. The five genomic models predicted EBV and de‐regressed EBV of the ten traits similarly well. Of the two cross‐validation methods, leave‐one‐out cross‐validation maximized the number of animals at the stage of training for genomic prediction. Genomic prediction accuracy (GPA) on the ten quantitative traits was validated in 1,106 newly genotyped Brangus animals based on the SNP effects estimated in the previous set of 3,797 Brangus animals, and they were slightly lower than GPA in the original data. The present study was the first to leverage currently available genotype and phenotype resources in order to harness genomic prediction in Brangus beef cattle.     

Accuracy of genomic prediction using imputed whole‐genome sequence data in white layers

There is an increasing interest in using whole‐genome sequence data in genomic selection breeding programmes. Prediction of breeding values is expected to be more accurate when whole‐genome sequence is used, because the causal mutations are assumed to be in the data. We performed genomic prediction for the number of eggs in white layers using imputed whole‐genome resequence data including ~4.6 million SNPs. The prediction accuracies based on sequence data were compared with the accuracies from the 60 K SNP panel. Predictions were based on genomic best linear unbiased prediction (GBLUP) as well as a Bayesian variable selection model (BayesC). Moreover, the prediction accuracy from using different types of variants (synonymous, non‐synonymous and non‐coding SNPs) was evaluated. Genomic prediction using the 60 K SNP panel resulted in a prediction accuracy of 0.74 when GBLUP was applied. With sequence data, there was a small increase (~1%) in prediction accuracy over the 60 K genotypes. With both 60 K SNP panel and sequence data, GBLUP slightly outperformed BayesC in predicting the breeding values. Selection of SNPs more likely to affect the phenotype (i.e. non‐synonymous SNPs) did not improve the accuracy of genomic prediction. The fact that sequence data were based on imputation from a small number of sequenced animals may have limited the potential to improve the prediction accuracy. A small reference population (n = 1004) and possible exclusion of many causal SNPs during quality control can be other possible reasons for limited benefit of sequence data. We expect, however, that the limited improvement is because the 60 K SNP panel was already sufficiently dense to accurately determine the relationships between animals in our data.     

Selection of core animals in the Algorithm for Proven and Young using a simulation model

The Algorithm for Proven and Young (APY) enables the implementation of single‐step genomic BLUP (ssGBLUP) in large, genotyped populations by separating genotyped animals into core and non‐core subsets and creating a computationally efficient inverse for the genomic relationship matrix ( G ). As APY became the choice for large‐scale genomic evaluations in BLUP‐based methods, a common question is how to choose the animals in the core subset. We compared several core definitions to answer this question. Simulations comprised a moderately heritable trait for 95,010 animals and 50,000 genotypes for animals across five generations. Genotypes consisted of 25,500 SNP distributed across 15 chromosomes. Genotyping errors and missing pedigree were also mimicked. Core animals were defined based on individual generations, equal representation across generations, and at random. For a sufficiently large core size, core definitions had the same accuracies and biases, even if the core animals had imperfect genotypes. When genotyped animals had unknown parents, accuracy and bias were significantly better (p ≤ .05) for random and across generation core definitions.     

Genomic best linear unbiased prediction method reflecting the degree of linkage disequilibrium

The degree of linkage disequilibrium (LD) between markers differs depending on the location of the genome; this difference biases genetic evaluation by genomic best linear unbiased prediction (GBLUP). To correct this bias, we used three GBLUP methods reflecting the degree of LD (GBLUP‐LD). In the three GBLUP‐LD methods, genomic relationship matrices were conducted from single nucleotide polymorphism markers weighted according to local LD levels. The predictive abilities of GBLUP‐LD were investigated by estimating variance components and assessing the accuracies of estimated breeding values using simulation data. When quantitative trait loci (QTL) were located at weak LD regions, the predictive abilities of the three GBLUP‐LD methods were superior to those of GBLUP and Bayesian lasso except when the number of QTL was small. In particular, the superiority of GBLUP‐LD increased with decreasing trait heritability. The rates of QTL at weak LD regions would increase when selection by GBLUP continues; this consequently decreases the predictive ability of GBLUP. Thus, the GBLUP‐LD could be applicable for populations selected by GBLUP for a long time. However, if QTL were located at strong LD regions, the accuracies of three GBLUP‐LD methods were lower than GBLUP and Bayesian lasso.     

Improving genomic prediction accuracy for meat tenderness in Nellore cattle using artificial neural networks

The goal of this study was to compare the predictive performance of artificial neural networks (ANNs) with Bayesian ridge regression, Bayesian Lasso, Bayes A, Bayes B and Bayes Cπ in estimating genomic breeding values for meat tenderness in Nellore cattle. The animals were genotyped with the Illumina Bovine HD Bead Chip (HD, 777K from 90 samples) and the GeneSeek Genomic Profiler (GGP Indicus HD, 77K from 485 samples). The quality control for the genotypes was applied on each Chip and comprised removal of SNPs located on non-autosomal chromosomes, with minor allele frequency <5%, deviation from HWE (p < 10^–6), and with linkage disequilibrium >0.8. The FImpute program was used for genotype imputation. Pedigree-based analyses indicated that meat tenderness is moderately heritable (0.35), indicating that it can be improved by direct selection. Prediction accuracies were very similar across the Bayesian regression models, ranging from 0.20 (Bayes A) to 0.22 (Bayes B) and 0.14 (Bayes Cπ) to 0.19 (Bayes A) for the additive and dominance effects, respectively. ANN achieved the highest accuracy (0.33) of genomic prediction of genetic merit. Even though deep neural networks are recognized to deliver more accurate predictions, in our study ANN with one single hidden layer, 105 neurons and rectified linear unit (ReLU) activation function was sufficient to increase the prediction of genetic merit for meat tenderness. These results indicate that an ANN with relatively simple architecture can provide superior genomic predictions for meat tenderness in Nellore cattle.     

基于简化基因组测序技术和基因芯片技术比较研究黄羽肉鸡基因组选择

旨在比较简化基因组测序技术和基因芯片技术实施基因组选择的基因组估计育种值（GEBV）准确性。本研究在AH肉鸡资源群体F₂代中随机选取395个个体（其中公鸡212只,母鸡183只,来自8个半同胞家系）,同时采用10×SLAF测序技术和Illumina Chicken 60K SNP芯片进行基因标记分型。采用基因组最佳无偏估计法（GBLUP）和BayesCπ对6周体重、12周体重、日均增重、日均采食量、饲料转化率和剩余采食量等6个性状进行GEBV准确性比较研究,并采用5折交叉验证法验证。结果表明,采用同一基因标记分型平台,两种育种值估计方法所得GEBV准确性差异不显著（P>0.05）;不同的性状对基因标记分型平台的选择存在差异,对于6周体重,使用基因芯片可获得更高的GEBV准确性（P<0.05）,对于剩余采食量,则使用简化基因组测序可获得更高的GEBV准确性（P<0.05）。综合6个性状GEBV均值比较,两个基因标记分型平台之间差异不到0.01,高通量测序技术和基因芯片技术都可以用于黄羽肉鸡基因组选择。     

Comparison between Reduced-Representation Genome Sequencing and SNP Chip for Genomic Selection in Yellow-feathered Broiler

This study aimed to compare the accuracy of the genomic estimated breeding value (GEBV) using reduced-representation genome sequencing technology and SNP chip technology to implement genomic selection. A total of 395 individuals (212♂+ 183♀, from 8 half-sib families) were randomly selected from F₂ generation of AH broiler resource population, and genotyped with 10×specific-locus amplified fragment sequencing (SLAF-seq) and Illumina Chicken 60K SNP BeadChip. Genomic best linear unbiased prediction (GBLUP) and BayesCπ were used to compare the accuracy of genomic estimated breeding values (GEBV) for 6 traits: body weight at the 6^th week, body weight at the 12^th week, average daily gain (ADG), average daily feed intake (ADFI), feed conversion ratio (FCR) and residual feed intake (RFI). A 5-fold cross validation procedure was used to verify the accuracies of GEBV between prediction models and between genotyping platforms. The results showed that there was no significant difference between accuracies of GEBV predicted by GBLUP and BayesCπ using the same genotyping platform(P>0.05). The superiority of the two genotyping platforms was different for different traits. For body weight at the 6^th week, the accuracy of GEBV was higher using chip SNPs (P<0.05). On the contrary, the accuracy was higher using SLAF-seq for residual feed intake (P<0.05). Comprehensive comparison of the means of GEBV for 6 traits, the difference between the two genotyping platforms was less than 0.01, therefore, both high throughput sequencing and chip SNPs can be used for genomic selection in yellow-feathered broiler.     

中国荷斯坦牛繁殖性状的基因组预测效果比较

旨在比较不同方法对中国荷斯坦牛繁殖性状的基因组预测效果,选择最佳的基因组预测方法及信息矩阵权重组合（τ和ω）用于实际育种。本研究利用北京地区33个牧场1998—2020年荷斯坦牛群繁殖记录,分析了3个重要繁殖性状：产犊至首次配种间隔（ICF）、青年牛配种次数（NSH）和成母牛配种次数（NSC）共98 483~197 764条表型数据。同时收集了8 718头母牛和3 477头公牛的基因芯片数据,根据具有芯片数据的牛群结构划分为公牛验证群和母牛验证群。随后,通过BLUPF90软件的AIREMLF90和BLUPF90模块利用最佳线性无偏预测（BLUP）、基因组最佳线性无偏预测（GBLUP）和一步法（ssGBLUP）对3个性状进行基因组预测,不同方法的预测效果根据准确性和无偏性来评估。结果表明,3个繁殖性状均为低遗传力性状（0.03~0.08）;ssGBLUP方法中,各性状信息矩阵的权重取值能够在一定程度上提升基因组预测的效果;ICF、NSH和NSC在母牛验证群下的最佳权重取值分别为：τ=1.3和ω=0,τ=0.5和ω=0.4以及τ=0.5和ω=0;在公牛验证群下最优权重组合分别为：τ=1.5和ω=0,τ=1.3和ω=0.8以及τ=0.5和ω=0;基于最佳权重的ssGBLUP方法准确性较BLUP和GBLUP方法准确性分别提升了0.10~0.39和0.08~0.15,且无偏性最接近于1。综上,使用最佳权重组合的ssGBLUP时,各性状基因组预测结果具有较高准确性和无偏性,建议作为中国荷斯坦牛繁殖性状基因组选择方法。     

整合生物学先验信息的全基因组选择方法及其在家畜育种中的应用进展

相较于传统的育种方法,全基因组选择（genomic selection,GS）通过对拟留种的个体进行早期选择和增加选择的准确性进而加快育种的遗传进展。通过改进GS方法无法再缩短育种的世代间隔,因而如何提高GS的准确性以获得额外的遗传进展一直是GS研究的核心问题。当前,各种组学技术不断成熟,从公开的资料或前期的研究积累获取生物学先验信息已比较容易。因而,如何在GS模型中整合已知的先验信息进而提高GS的准确性以获得额外的遗传进展成为当前育种研究的热点问题。本文对生物学先验信息的类型以及整合先验信息的GS方法进行综述,探讨了这些方法在家畜育种中的应用和前景,以期为家畜育种中开展整合生物学先验信息的GS研究提供借鉴与参考。