A general approach for calculation of genomic relationship matrices for epistatic effects

Abstract Text: The aim of this study is to present a general procedure to calculate, from SNP markers, the covariances between individuals due to additive, dominant and epistatic effects, e.g. “additive x dominant genomic relationships”. The proposed method expands the orthogonal approach called NOIA and does not assume Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. It is thus applicable to, e.g., crosses. A real mice data set was used to illustrate its implementation. Estimated variance components show that epistatic interactions may explain an important portion of the overall genetic variability for some traits of interest, such as growth speed. Some of the potential applications of the procedure within the genomic selection scope are briefly discussed. 

Keywords: Dominance, Epistasis, Genomic Selection