TY  - JOUR
A1  - Carlborg, Örjan
A1  - Kerje, Susanne
A1  - Schütz, Karin
A1  - Jacobsson, Lina
A1  - Jensen, Per
A1  - Andersson, Leif
T1  - A Global Search Reveals Epistatic Interaction Between QTL for Early Growth in the Chicken
Y1  - 2003/03/01 
JF  - Genome Research 
JO  - Genome Research 
SP  - 413 
EP  - 421 
DO  - 10.1101/gr.528003 
VL  - 13 
IS  - 3 
UR  - http://genome.cshlp.org/content/13/3/413.abstract 
N2  - We have identified quantitative trait loci (QTL) explaining a large proportion of the variation in body weights at different ages and growth between chronological ages in an F2 intercross between red junglefowl and White Leghorn chickens. QTL were mapped using forward selection for loci with significant marginal genetic effects and with a simultaneous search for epistatic QTL pairs. We found 22 significant loci contributing to these traits, nine of these were only found by the simultaneous two-dimensional search, which demonstrates the power of this approach for detecting loci affecting complex traits. We have also estimated the relative contribution of additive, dominance, and epistasis effects to growth and the contribution of epistasis was more pronounced prior to 46 days of age, whereas additive genetic effects explained the major portion of the genetic variance later in life. Several of the detected loci affected either early or late growth but not both. Very few loci affected the entire growth process, which points out that early and late growth, at least to some extent, have different genetic regulation.[Supplemental material is available online at www.genome.org.] 
ER  -