Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Jan 4;220(1):iyab192.
doi: 10.1093/genetics/iyab192.

Transmission distortion and genetic incompatibilities between alleles in a multigenerational mouse advanced intercross line

Affiliations

Transmission distortion and genetic incompatibilities between alleles in a multigenerational mouse advanced intercross line

Danny Arends et al. Genetics. .

Abstract

While direct additive and dominance effects on complex traits have been mapped repeatedly, additional genetic factors contributing to the heterogeneity of complex traits have been scarcely investigated. To assess genetic background effects, we investigated transmission ratio distortions (TRDs) of alleles from parent to offspring using an advanced intercross line (AIL) of an initial cross between the mouse inbred strains C57BL/6NCrl (B6N) and BFMI860-12 [Berlin Fat Mouse Inbred (BFMI)]. A total of 341 males of generation 28 and their respective 61 parents and 66 grandparents were genotyped using Mega Mouse Universal Genotyping Arrays. TRDs were investigated using allele transmission asymmetry tests, and pathway overrepresentation analysis was performed. Sequencing data were used to test for overrepresentation of nonsynonymous SNPs (nsSNPs) in TRD regions. Genetic incompatibilities were tested using the Bateson-Dobzhansky-Muller two-locus model. A total of 62 TRD regions were detected, many in close proximity to the telocentric centromere. TRD regions contained 44.5% more nsSNPs than randomly selected regions (182 vs 125.9 ± 17.0, P < 1 × 10-4). Testing for genetic incompatibilities between TRD regions identified 29 genome-wide significant incompatibilities between TRD regions [P(BF) < 0.05]. Pathway overrepresentation analysis of genes in TRD regions showed that DNA methylation, epigenetic regulation of RNA, and meiotic/meiosis regulation pathways were affected independent of the parental origin of the TRD. Paternal BFMI TRD regions showed overrepresentation in the small interfering RNA biogenesis and in the metabolism of lipids and lipoproteins. Maternal B6N TRD regions harbored genes involved in meiotic recombination, cell death, and apoptosis pathways. The analysis of genes in TRD regions suggests the potential distortion of protein-protein interactions influencing obesity and diabetic retinopathy as a result of disadvantageous combinations of allelic variants in Aass, Pgx6, and Nme8. Using an AIL significantly improves the resolution at which we can investigate TRD. Our analysis implicates distortion of protein-protein interactions as well as meiotic drive as the underlying mechanisms leading to the observed TRD in our AIL. Furthermore, genes with large amounts of nsSNPs located in TRD regions are more likely to be involved in pathways that are related to the phenotypic differences between the parental strains. Genes in these TRD regions provide new targets for investigating genetic adaptation, protein-protein interactions, and determinants of complex traits such as obesity.

Keywords: allele transmission bias; genetic incompatibilities; interactions; intergenerational effects; non-Mendelian inheritance.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Genomic regions showing allele TRD toward generation 28. Bars left of the chromosomes mark the SNPs which show paternal TRD (♂); bars on the right side show maternal TRD (♀), using a genome-wide significance level of P < 0.01. Colors show the origin of the allele preferentially transmitted, blue: B6N allele, orange: BFMI allele. Chromosomal black areas (suitable markers) contain markers which passed quality control steps, segregate between the founder lines (BFMI and B6N), and have at least 10 heterozygous parents in generation 27 required to perform a valid X2 test. Chromosomal beige areas (Founders equal) are markers at which the BFMI and B6N have the same allele, these markers do not segregate in the AIL population, and cannot be tested for TRD. Chromosomal gray areas (unsuitable markers) have not been tested due to lack of heterozygous parents in generation 27 at these markers. Chromosomal red areas are not in HWE in generation 28, since HWE is an assumption underlying a valid TRD test, these areas were excluded from TRD analysis.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Significant genetic incompatibilities between regions showing TRD. Heat map showing the pairwise genetic incompatibility scan between TRD regions, genome-wide P(BF) < 0.05. The allele combination (M1|M2) which is most reduced (in percentages) between the observed and expected allele combinations are shown in the figure with colors denoting the founder allele combination M1 (x-axis) and M2 (y-axis). Names of regions are composed of chr: start-end allele origin; start and end positions are given in megabase pairs; furthermore, the TRD origin is coded by M for maternal and P for paternal. When two regions were located on the same chromosome the genetic incompatibility test was not performed (gray areas), since the pairwise genetic incompatibility test can only be performed on loci which are not in linkage.

Similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Ackermann M, Beyer A. 2012. Systematic detection of epistatic interactions based on allele pair frequencies. PLoS Genet. 8:e1002463.doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1002463. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Arends D, Heise S, Kärst S, Trost J, Brockmann GA. 2016. Fine mapping a major obesity locus (jObes1) using a Berlin Fat Mouse × B6N advanced intercross population. Int J Obes (Lond). 40:1784–1788. doi:10.1038/ijo.2016.150. - PubMed
    1. Benjamini Y, Hochberg Y. 1995. Controlling the false discovery rate: a practical and powerful approach to multiple testing. J R Stat Soc Ser B. 57:289–300. doi:10.2307/2346101.
    1. Blake JA, Baldarelli R, Kadin JA, Richardson JE, Smith CL, et al.; Mouse Genome Database Group. 2021. Mouse Genome Database (MGD): knowledgebase for mouse–human comparative biology. Nucleic Acids Res. 49:D981–D987. doi:10.1093/nar/gkaa1083. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bolger AM, Lohse M, Usadel B. 2014. Trimmomatic: a flexible trimmer for Illumina sequence data. Bioinformatics. 30:2114–2120. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btu170. - PMC - PubMed