Journal of Heredity Advance Access published online on October 3, 2008
Journal of Heredity, doi:10.1093/jhered/esn081
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Brief Communication |
Estimating Heritability of Gene Expression Using Parent–Offspring Regression with 2-Channel Microarrays
From the Department of Forest Sciences, Faculty of Forestry, The University of British Columbia, 2424 Main Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T 1Z4, Canada
Address correspondence to R. Albouyeh at the address above, or e-mail: albouyeh{at}interchange.ubc.ca.
With the advent of microarrays, it is possible to look at the entire transcriptome of an organism as a suite of quantitative traits. An obvious question to now ask is: To what extent is gene expression heritable? In quantitative genetics, single parent–offspring regression is the most straightforward method in situations where the progenies are produced by cross-pollination to many male parents of unknown location. However, estimation of the heritability of gene expression with single parent–offspring regression has not yet been examined with 2-channel microarrays. Here we introduce 3 experimental designs: chain design, independent quartets design, and completely independent design. We then compare them with common reference design in respect to statistical power and bias of the estimates. In our simulations, we also incorporated a model of simple inheritance with one gene. The results of our simulations indicate the efficiency of the chain design over the alternative design considered.
Key Words: experimental design • gene expression • genetical genomics • heritability • microarray
Corresponding Editor: Howard Ross
Received April 9, 2008
Revised July 21, 2008
Accepted September 2, 2008