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Genomic dissection of inbreeding depression: a gate to new opportunities

ABSTRACT

Inbreeding depression, reduction in performance of quantitative traits, including reproduction and survival, caused by inbreeding, is a well-known phenomenon observed in almost all experimental, domesticated, and natural populations. In spite of its importance to the fate of a small population and numerous research performed in the last century, the genetic basis of inbreeding depression is still unclear. Recent fast development of molecular techniques has enabled estimation of a genomic inbreeding coefficient (FROH), which reflects realized autozygosity and can be further partitioned to chromosomes and chromosomal segments. In this review, we first describe classical approach used in the estimation of inbreeding in livestock populations, followed by early concepts of replacing pedigree inbreeding coefficient by individual heterozygosity. Then, we explain runs of homozygosity as key approach in estimating realized autozygosity. Furthermore, we present two different concepts of analysing regions that substantially contribute to the inbreeding depression. Thus, we describe how to identify or map mutations that result in the reduction of performance and, in terms of quantitative genetics, how to analyse the architecture of inbreeding depression. At the end, we discuss future perspectives in eliminating deleterious mutations from livestock populations.

Key Words:
autozygosity; detrimental load; genomics; runs of homozygosity

Introduction

Any diploid individual is inbred if its chromosomal segments located on homologous chromosome pairs, one from each parent, are identical by descent. Inbred individuals arise as a consequence of inbreeding or, at its most restrictive and classical definition, mating of parents that are more closely related than a randomly sampled couple chosen from that population (Crow and Kimura, 1970Crow, J. F. and Kimura, M. 1970. An Introduction to Population Genetics Theory. Harper & Row, New York, NY.; Lush, 1994Lush, J. L. 1994. The genetics of populations. Prepared for publication by A. B. Chapman, R. R. Shrode and with an addendum by J. F. Crow. College of Agriculture, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. Special Report 94.). In populations with finite size, inbreeding is unavoidable and changes genotype frequencies by increasing homozygosity at the expense of heterozygosity, while leaving allele frequencies unaffected. For a quantitative trait, besides the redistribution of the genetic variations within and between populations (Fernandez et al., 1995Fernandez, A.; Toro, M. A. and Lopez-Fanjul, C. 1995. The effect of inbreeding on the redistribution of genetic variance of fecundity and viability in Tribolium castaneum. Heredity 75:376-381.), this change may lead to the inbreeding depression, a negative consequence of inbreeding that is threatening to the survival of genetically small populations. While harmful consequences of inbreeding had been known for millennia, Darwin (1868Darwin, C. R. 1868. Variation of animals and plants under domestication. John Murray, London, UK., 1876Darwin, C. 1876. The effects of cross and self fertilisation in the vegetable kingdom. John Murray, London, UK.) was the first who provided detailed and recorded evidence. Although it can have various manifestations, such as lethal and detrimental malformations and abnormalities, inbreeding depression is defined as a reduction in performance of the fitness-related traits (Falconer and Mackay, 1996Falconer, D. S. and Mackay, T. F. C. 1996. Introduction to quantitative genetics. 4th ed. Longman, Essex, UK. 464p.; Charlesworth and Willis, 2009Charlesworth, D. and Willis, J. 2009. The genetics of inbreeding depression. Nature Reviews Genetics 10:783-796.). Inbreeding depression is a ubiquitous phenomenon observed in almost all experimental, domesticated, and natural populations, including humans (Wright, 1977Wright, S. 1977. Evolution and the genetics of populations. Vol. 3, Experimental results and evolutionary deductions. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, USA.; Pirchner, 1985Pirchner, F. 1985. Genetic structure of population. 1. Closed populations or matings among related individuals. In: General and quantitative genetics. Chapman, A. B., ed. World Animal Science A4. Elsevier, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.; Falconer and Mackay, 1996Falconer, D. S. and Mackay, T. F. C. 1996. Introduction to quantitative genetics. 4th ed. Longman, Essex, UK. 464p.).

In spite of its importance to the fate of a small population and numerous research performed in the last century, the genetic basis of inbreeding depression is still unclear. There are three theoretical hypotheses that provide explanation for the existence of inbreeding depression. The first is the partial dominance hypothesis presuming that, under directional dominance, a large number of recessive/partially recessive genes cause inbreeding depression (Davenport, 1908Davenport, C. B. 1908. Degeneration, albinism and inbreeding. Science 28:454-455.; Crow, 1952Crow, J. F. 1952. Dominance and overdominance. p.282-294. In: Heterosis. Gowen, J. W., ed. Iowa State College Press, Ames, IA, USA.). The second is the overdominance hypothesis that presumes inbreeding depression as the consequence of the superiority of heterozygous genotypes (East, 1908East, E. M. 1908. Inbreeding in corn. Connecticut Agricultural Experimental Station Report 1907:419-428.; Shull, 1908Shull, G. H. 1908. The composition of a field of maize. Journal of Heredity 4:296-301.; Crow, 1952Crow, J. F. 1952. Dominance and overdominance. p.282-294. In: Heterosis. Gowen, J. W., ed. Iowa State College Press, Ames, IA, USA.; Charlesworth and Charlesworth, 1999Charlesworth, B. and Charlesworth, D. 1999. The genetic basis of inbreeding depression. Genetics Research 74:329-340.). Sometimes it is difficult to separate it from pseudo-overdominance caused by joint effects of two closely linked genes. While being less debated, it is also possible that inbreeding depression is affected by epistatic gene interactions (Kempthorne, 1957Kempthorne, O. 1957. An introduction to genetic statistics. Wiley, Oxford, UK.; Jain and Allard, 1966Jain, S. and Allard, R. 1966. The effects of linkage, epistasis, and inbreeding on population changes under selection. Genetics 53:633-659.; Curik et al., 2001Curik, I.; Sölkner, J. and Stipic, N. 2001. The influence of selection and epistasis on inbreeding depression estimates. Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics 118:247-262.). While majority of evidence are in favour of the dominance hypothesis (Charlesworth and Willis, 2009Charlesworth, D. and Willis, J. 2009. The genetics of inbreeding depression. Nature Reviews Genetics 10:783-796.), the influence of other hypotheses, as well as of their mutual involvement, is also realistic (Kristensen and Sorensen, 2005Kristensen, T. and Sorensen, A. 2005. Inbreeding - lessons from animal breeding, evolutionary biology and conservation genetics. Animal Science 80:121-133.).

Recent fast development of molecular techniques has enabled estimation of a genomic inbreeding coefficient (FROH), which reflects realized autozygosity and can be further partitioned to chromosomes and chromosomal segments (McQuillan et al., 2008McQuillan, R.; Leutenegger, A.; Abdel-Rahman, R.; Franklin, C.; Pericic, M.; Barac-Lauc, L.; Smolej-Narancic, N.; Janicijevic, B.; Polasek, O.; Tenesa, A.; Macleod, A.; Farrington, S.; Rudan, P.; Hayward, C.; Vitart, V.; Rudan, I.; Wild, S.; Dunlop, M.; Wright, A.; Campbell, H. and Wilson, J. 2008. Runs of homozygosity in European populations. American Journal of Human Genetics 83:359-372.; Bosse et al., 2012Bosse, M.; Megens, H.-J.; Madsen, O.; Paudel, Y.; Frantz, L.; Schook, L.; Crooijmans, R. and Groenen, M. 2012. Regions of homozygosity in the porcine genome: consequence of demography and the recombination landscape. PLoS Genetics 8:e1003100.; Curik et al., 2014Curik, I.; Ferenčaković, M. and Sölkner, J. 2014. Inbreeding and runs of homozygosity: a possible solution to an old problem. Livestock Science 166:26-34.). This opens the gate to the number of experimental possibilities that would further elucidate the genetic basis of inbreeding depression.

The main objective of this review is to stimulate animal breeders to perform research that would increase our understanding of inbreeding depression and reduce its negative effects on livestock populations. To achieve this objective, we started by describing the classical approach used in the estimation of inbreeding in livestock populations, followed by early concepts of surrogating the pedigree inbreeding coefficient (FPED) by individual heterozygosity. Then, we explained runs of homozygosity (ROH) as the key approach in estimating realized autozygosity. Furthermore, we presented two different concepts of analysing regions that substantially contribute to the inbreeding depression. At the end, we discussed future perspectives in eliminating deleterious mutations from livestock populations.

Classical approach of the inbreeding depression estimation

For the various species and populations, depending on their reproductive biology and data available, various statistical approaches and experimental designs have been applied (Lynch, 1988Lynch, M. 1988. Design and analysis of experiments on random drift and inbreeding depression. Genetics 120:791-807.). However, in livestock populations, regression of individual performance on FPED of each animal is the most frequent procedure applied (Kristensen and Sorensen, 2005Kristensen, T. and Sorensen, A. 2005. Inbreeding - lessons from animal breeding, evolutionary biology and conservation genetics. Animal Science 80:121-133.; Leroy, 2014Leroy, G. 2014. Inbreeding depression in livestock species: review and meta-analysis. Animal Genetics 45:618-628.). Although widely applied, the methodology has several critical points, some related to the statistical analysis and the other related to the estimation of inbreeding, which should be taken into account when interpreting results. Here, we will mention some statistical problems that might arise when estimating inbreeding depression. Firstly, homogeneity of variance across the inbreeding range is violated by definition, since inbreeding affects the variance of the quantitative trait (e.g. Abney et al., 2000Abney, M.; McPeek, M. S and Ober, C. 2000. Estimation of variance components of quantitative traits in inbred populations. The American Journal of Human Genetics 66:629-650.). The low variance in inbreeding might lead to the low power of the regression analysis (Keller et al., 2011Keller, M. and Visscher, P. and Goddard, M. 2011. Quantification of inbreeding due to distant ancestors and its detection using dense SNP data. Genetics 189:237-249.). Quite often, inbreeding range found in analyzed individuals is narrow, from 0.0 to 0.1 with several outliers having very high inbreeding >0.2, making it difficult to conclude what would happen at higher inbreeding levels. Analyses performed often require the use of mixed models (individual animal model) to account for the simultaneous rise in genetic trend and inbreeding level (sometimes resulting from more informative pedigrees) over multiple generations of breeding (Becker et al., 2015Becker, P.; Hegelbach, J.; Keller, L. and Postma, E. 2015. Phenotype-associated inbreeding biases estimates of inbreeding depression in a wild bird population. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 29:35-46). Still, the major factor influencing the precision and bias of the inbreeding depression estimation is the error that arise in the estimation of true or realized inbreeding coefficient. Incomplete and unbalanced pedigree information is one source of errors (Cassell et al., 2003Cassell, B.; Adamec, V. and Pearson, R. 2003. Maternal and fetal inbreeding depression for 70-day nonreturn and calving rate in Holsteins and Jerseys. Journal of Dairy Science 86:2977-2983.) in estimation of inbreeding depression. In experimental analyses, different strategies have been applied to account for the bias introduced by incomplete pedigrees (VanRaden, 1992VanRaden, P. M. 1992. Accounting for inbreeding and crossbreeding in genetic evaluation of large populations. Journal of Dairy Science 75:3136-3144.; Lutaaya et al., 1999Lutaaya, B. E.; Misztal, I.; Bertrand, J. and Mabry, J. 1999. Inbreeding in populations with incomplete pedigrees. Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics 116:475-480.; González-Recio et al., 2007González-Recio, O.; de Maturana, E. L. and Gutiérrez, J. 2007. Inbreeding depression on female fertility and calving ease in Spanish dairy cattle. Journal of Dairy Science 90:5744-5752. and Nagy et al., 2013Nagy, I.; Gorjanc, G.; Curik, I.; Farkas, J.; Kiszlinger, H. and Szendrő, Z. 2013. The contribution of dominance and inbreeding depression in estimating variance components for litter size in Pannon White rabbits. Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics 130:303-311.). Pedigree errors are another source of errors that is present in livestock populations (Leroy and Baumung, 2011Leroy, G. and Baumung, R. 2011. Mating practices and the dissemination of genetic disorders in domestic animals, based on the example of dog breeding. Animal Genetics 42:66-74.). However, a large error is introduced by theoretical properties of the FPED, since it is an expectation that neglects stochastic variation of inbreeding and recombination, i.e., all individuals within a litter will have the same estimate of inbreeding. Furthermore, FPED is based on infinitesimal model assuming evenly distributed autozygosity across the genome (Wray et al., 1990Wray, N.; Woolliams, J. A. and Thompson, R. 1990. Methods for predicting rates of inbreeding in selected populations. Theoretical and Applied Genetics 80:503-512.) and, thus, neglects the impact of selection on the regional autozygosity (Curik et al., 2001Curik, I.; Sölkner, J. and Stipic, N. 2001. The influence of selection and epistasis on inbreeding depression estimates. Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics 118:247-262., 2002Curik, I.; Solkner, J., Stipic, N. 2002. Effects of models with finite loci, selection, dominance, epistasis and linkage on inbreeding coefficients based on pedigree and genotypic information. Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics 119:101-115.).

Molecular measures as surrogates of the pedigree inbreeding coefficient

Individual heterozygosity and derivative coefficients

In the absence of genealogical records, which is the case for almost all natural populations (for some exceptions, see Pemberton (2008)Pemberton, J. 2008. Wild pedigrees: the way forward. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 275:613-621.), the estimation of the negative consequences of inbreeding should rely on molecular information. Thus, it is not surprising that biologists were first to put considerable efforts in finding a surrogate coefficient of FPED that would enable inference of inbreeding depression (Mitton and Grant, 1984Mitton, J. B. and Grant, M. C. 1984. Association among protein heterozygosity, growth rate and developmental homeostasis. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 15:479-499.; David, 1998David, P. 1998. Heterozygosity-fitness correlations: new perspectives on old problems. Heredity 80:531-537.; Coltman and Slate, 2003Coltman, D. and Slate, J. 2003. Microsatellite measures of inbreeding: A meta-analysis. Evolution 57:971-983.). Inbreeding is functionally related to the individual decrease in heterozygosity, because it induces identity disequilibrium within a genome (Weir and Cockerham, 1973Weir, B. S. and Cockerham, C. C. 1973. Mixed self and random mating at two loci. Genetics Research 21:247-262.) and, consequently, homozygosity (heterozygosity) correlation between loci. It is quite straightforward that measures reflecting individual heterozygosity are logical candidates for a surrogate of FPED. During the last two decades, several coefficients have been used, all derived from or/and related to the individual multilocus heterozygosity (MLH), calculated as proportion of heterozygous loci (Coulson et al., 1998Coulson, T.; Pemberton, J.; Albon, S.; Beaumont, M.; Marshall, T.; Slate, J.; Guinness, F. and Clutton-Brock, T. 1998. Microsatellites reveal heterosis in red deer. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 265:489-495.; Slate and Pemberton, 2002Slate, J. and Pemberton, J. M. 2002. Comparing molecular measures for detecting inbreeding depression. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 15:20-31.). The most popular surrogate coefficients were standardized MLH (Coulson et al., 1998Coulson, T.; Pemberton, J.; Albon, S.; Beaumont, M.; Marshall, T.; Slate, J.; Guinness, F. and Clutton-Brock, T. 1998. Microsatellites reveal heterosis in red deer. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 265:489-495.), mean d squared (μd2; Coltman et al., 1998Coltman, D. W.; Bowen, W. D. and Wright, J. M. 1998. Birth weight and neonatal survival of harbour seal pups are positively correlated with genetic variation measured by microsatellites. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 265:803-809.; Coulson et al., 1998Coulson, T.; Pemberton, J.; Albon, S.; Beaumont, M.; Marshall, T.; Slate, J.; Guinness, F. and Clutton-Brock, T. 1998. Microsatellites reveal heterosis in red deer. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 265:489-495.), and internal relatedness (Amos et al., 2001Amos, W.; Worthington Wilmer, J.; Fullard, K.; Burg, T. M.; Croxall, J. P. and Bloch, D. 2001. The influence of parental relatedness on reproductive success. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 268:2021-2027.). Still, to be precise, all those coefficients do refer to inbreeding-outbreeding continuum as they are not relative measures to some defined base population as FPED is. For that reason, any established association cannot be separated from heterosis, an almost antithetical phenomenon to inbreeding depression. Thus, we consider heterozygosity-fitness correlations only as indicators of inbreeding depression (David, 1998David, P. 1998. Heterozygosity-fitness correlations: new perspectives on old problems. Heredity 80:531-537.; Coltman and Slate, 2003Coltman, D. and Slate, J. 2003. Microsatellite measures of inbreeding: A meta-analysis. Evolution 57:971-983.), while a number of conceptual and methodological issues are still debated (Szulkin et al., 2010Szulkin, M.; Bierne, N. and David, P. 2010. Heterozygosity-fitness correlations: A time for reappraisal. Evolution 64:1202-1217.; Grueber et al., 2011Grueber, C.; Nakagawa, S.; Laws, R. and Jamieson, I. 2011. Multimodel inference in ecology and evolution: challenges and solutions. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 24:699-711.; Miller and Coltman, 2014Miller, J. M. and Coltman, D. W. 2014. Assessment of identity disequilibrium and its relation to empirical heterozygosity fitness correlations: a meta-analysis. Molecular Ecology 23:1899-1909.).

However, in the last decade, the interest for defining a molecular surrogate of FPED has exploded in human and livestock research driven by the fact that benefits of the next generation sequencing revolution were strongly supported by health and food industry in human (Manolio, 2016Manolio, T. E. 2016. Implementing genomics and pharmacogenomics in the clinic: The National Human Genome Research Institute's genomic medicine portfolio. Atherosclerosis 253:225-236.) and livestock (Van Eenennaam et al., 2014Van Eenennaam, A. L.; Weigel, K. A.; Young, A. E.; Cleveland, M. A. and Dekkers, J. C. M. 2014. Applied animal genomics: results from the field. Annual Review of Animal Biosciences 2:105-139.; Wiggans et al., 2017Wiggans, G. R.; Cole, J.; Hubbard, S. M. and Sonstegard, T. S. 2017. Genomic selection in dairy cattle: The USDA Experience. Annual Review of Animal Biosciences 5:13.1-13.19.) populations. Very soon, all concepts developed by biologists have been re-evaluated with a large number of markers (Carothers et al., 2006Carothers, A. D.; Rudan, I.; Kolcic, I.; Polasek, O.; Hayward, C.; Wright, A. F.; Campbell, H.; Teague, P.; Hastie, N. D. and Weber, J. L. 2006. Estimating human inbreeding coefficients: Comparison of genealogical and marker heterozygosity approaches. Annals of Human Genetics 70:666-676.; Govidnaraju et al., 2009Govindaraju, D. R.; Larson, M. G.; Yin, X.; Benjamin, E. J.; Rao, M. B. and Vasan, R. S. 2009. Association between SNP heterozygosity and quantitative traits in the Framingham Heart Study. Annals of Human Genetics 73:465-473.; Curik et al., 2010Curik, I.; Ferencakovic, M.; Gredler, B. and Sölkner, J. 2010. Genome-wide heterozygosity and pedigree inbreeding coefficients in Simmental cattle population. In: 9th World Congress on Genetics Applied to Livestock Production, Leipzig.; Polasek et al., 2010Polasek, O.; Hayward, C.; Bellenguez, C.; Vitart, V.; Kolcic, I.; McQuillan, R.; Saftic, V.; Gyllensten, U.; Wilson, J.; Rudan, I.; Wright, A.; Campbell, H. and Leutenegger, A.-L. 2010. Comparative assessment of methods for estimating individual genome-wide homozygosity-by-descent from human genomic data. BMC Genomics 11:139.) and a number of other genomic inbreeding coefficients have been developed (for an overview, see Polasek et al., 2010Polasek, O.; Hayward, C.; Bellenguez, C.; Vitart, V.; Kolcic, I.; McQuillan, R.; Saftic, V.; Gyllensten, U.; Wilson, J.; Rudan, I.; Wright, A.; Campbell, H. and Leutenegger, A.-L. 2010. Comparative assessment of methods for estimating individual genome-wide homozygosity-by-descent from human genomic data. BMC Genomics 11:139. and Curik et al., 2014Curik, I.; Ferenčaković, M. and Sölkner, J. 2014. Inbreeding and runs of homozygosity: a possible solution to an old problem. Livestock Science 166:26-34.), while here, we will describe only the most commonly used. PLINK genomic inbreeding coefficient (FPLINK; Purcell et al., 2007Purcell, S.; Neale, B.; Todd-Brown, K.; Thomas, L.; Ferreira, M.; Bender, D.; Maller, J.; Sklar, P.; De Bakker, P.; Daly, M. and Sham, P. 2007. PLINK: a tool set for whole-genome association and population-based linkage analyses. American Journal of Human Genetics 81:559-575.) is calculated as FPLINK = (Oi – Ei)/(Li – Ei), in which, for an individual i, Li, Oi, and Ei refer to genotyped autosomal loci and observed and expected homozygous genotypes, respectively. Genomic inbreeding coefficients can also be calculated by subtracting one from the diagonal of genomic relationship matrices, following the calculation of FPED from the additive relationship matrix (VanRaden, 2007VanRaden, P. 2007. Genomic measures of relationship and inbreeding. INTERBULL bulletin 33.).

The most popular genomic matrices are those developed by VanRaden (2008)VanRaden, P. 2008. Efficient methods to compute genomic predictions. Journal of Dairy Science 91:4414-4423. and Yang et al. (2010)Yang, J.; Benyamin, B.; McEvoy, B.; Gordon, S.; Henders, A.; Nyholt, D.; Madden, P.; Heath, A.; Martin, N. and Montgomery, G. 2010. Common SNPs explain a large proportion of the heritability for human height. Nature Genetics 42:565-569., while similar derivatives exist. Still, all those inbreeding coefficients are influenced by allele frequencies; therefore, they can result in negative values and can be negatively correlated to each other (Zhang et al., 2015aZhang, Q.; Calus, M.; Guldbrandtsen, B.; Lund, M. S. and Sahana, G. 2015a. Estimation of inbreeding using pedigree, 50k SNP chip genotypes and full sequence data in three cattle breeds. BMC Genetics 16:88.). Thus, as defined, they are mostly based on the identity by state concepts being just proxies correlated with identity by descent-based inbreeding coefficients (Curik et al., 2014Curik, I.; Ferenčaković, M. and Sölkner, J. 2014. Inbreeding and runs of homozygosity: a possible solution to an old problem. Livestock Science 166:26-34.).

Runs of homozygosity: a new dimension in estimating autozygosity

The best concept that quantifies genomic inbreeding was proposed by McQuillan et al. (2008)McQuillan, R.; Leutenegger, A.; Abdel-Rahman, R.; Franklin, C.; Pericic, M.; Barac-Lauc, L.; Smolej-Narancic, N.; Janicijevic, B.; Polasek, O.; Tenesa, A.; Macleod, A.; Farrington, S.; Rudan, P.; Hayward, C.; Vitart, V.; Rudan, I.; Wild, S.; Dunlop, M.; Wright, A.; Campbell, H. and Wilson, J. 2008. Runs of homozygosity in European populations. American Journal of Human Genetics 83:359-372., as it estimates true or realized autozygosity directly. As introduced, FROH is a genomic measure of individual autozygosity defined as the proportion of the autosomal genome, in which autozygosity is derived from the assumption that very long stretches of homozygosity (ROH) can only result from inbreeding. When calculating FROH, McQuillan et al. (2008)McQuillan, R.; Leutenegger, A.; Abdel-Rahman, R.; Franklin, C.; Pericic, M.; Barac-Lauc, L.; Smolej-Narancic, N.; Janicijevic, B.; Polasek, O.; Tenesa, A.; Macleod, A.; Farrington, S.; Rudan, P.; Hayward, C.; Vitart, V.; Rudan, I.; Wild, S.; Dunlop, M.; Wright, A.; Campbell, H. and Wilson, J. 2008. Runs of homozygosity in European populations. American Journal of Human Genetics 83:359-372. excluded all the regions around centromeres, long genomic stretches devoid of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP), and considered only autosomal chromosome length covered by SNP. Subsequently, they calculated FROH according to the general formula: FROH = ∑LRoh/LAUTOSOME’ in which ΣLROH is the total length of all ROH according to a priory specified threshold of succeeding number of homozygotes SNP obtained from the chip arrays, while LAUTOSOME is the specified length of the autosomal genome covered by SNP in chip (McQuillan et al., 2008McQuillan, R.; Leutenegger, A.; Abdel-Rahman, R.; Franklin, C.; Pericic, M.; Barac-Lauc, L.; Smolej-Narancic, N.; Janicijevic, B.; Polasek, O.; Tenesa, A.; Macleod, A.; Farrington, S.; Rudan, P.; Hayward, C.; Vitart, V.; Rudan, I.; Wild, S.; Dunlop, M.; Wright, A.; Campbell, H. and Wilson, J. 2008. Runs of homozygosity in European populations. American Journal of Human Genetics 83:359-372.; Ferencakovic et al., 2011Ferencakovic, M.; Hamzic, E.; Gredler, B.; Curik, I. and Sölkner, J. 2011. Runs of homozygosity reveal genome-wideautozygosity in the Austrian fleckvieh cattle. Agriculturae Conspectus Scientificus 76:325-328.). Very soon after it has been proposed, FROH has been empirically evaluated in comparison to FPED and with respect to technical computations in a number of studies. All those studies were related to human (Kirin et al., 2010Kirin, M.; McQuillan, R.; Franklin, C.; Campbell, H.; McKeigue, P. and Wilson, J. 2010. Genomic runs of homozygosity record population history and consanguinity. PloS One 5:e13996.; Nothnagel et al., 2010Nothnagel, M.; Lu, T. T.; Kayser, M. and Krawczak, M. 2010. Genomic and geographic distribution of SNP-defined runs of homozygosity in Europeans. Human Molecular Genetics 19:2927-2935.; Pemberton et al., 2012Pemberton, T.; Absher, D.; Feldman, M.; Myers, R.; Rosenberg, N. and Li, J. 2012. Genomic patterns of homozygosity in worldwide human populations. American Journal of Human Genetics 91:275-292.) and livestock populations (Ferencakovic et al., 2011Ferencakovic, M.; Hamzic, E.; Gredler, B.; Curik, I. and Sölkner, J. 2011. Runs of homozygosity reveal genome-wideautozygosity in the Austrian fleckvieh cattle. Agriculturae Conspectus Scientificus 76:325-328.; Bosse et al., 2012Bosse, M.; Megens, H.-J.; Madsen, O.; Paudel, Y.; Frantz, L.; Schook, L.; Crooijmans, R. and Groenen, M. 2012. Regions of homozygosity in the porcine genome: consequence of demography and the recombination landscape. PLoS Genetics 8:e1003100.; Purfield et al., 2012Purfield, D.; Berry, D.; McParland, S. and Bradley, D. 2012. Runs of homozygosity and population history in cattle. BMC Genetics 13:70.; Ferenčaković et al., 2013aFerenčaković, M.; Hamzić, E.; Gredler, B.; Solberg, T.; Klemetsdal, G.; Curik, I. and Sölkner, J. 2013a. Estimates of autozygosity derived from runs of homozygosity: empirical evidence from selected cattle populations. Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics 130:286-293., bFerenčaković, M.; Sõlkner, J. and Curik, I. 2013b. Estimating autozygosity from high-throughput information: effects of SNP density and genotyping errors. Genetics Selection Evolution 45:42.), since those are well known for systematic and informative pedigrees as well as in computer simulations (Howrigan et al., 2011Howrigan, D.; Simonson, M. and Keller, M. 2011. Detecting autozygosity through runs of homozygosity: a comparison of three autozygosity detection algorithms. BMC Genomics 12:460.). Currently, Froh is considered as standard procedure for quantifying autozygosity and its popularity is exponentially increasing to a number of studies in human (Pippucci et al., 2014Pippucci, T.; Magi, A.; Gialluisi, A. and Romeo, G. 2014. Detection of runs of homozygosity from whole exome sequencing data: State of the art and perspectives for clinical, population and epidemiological studies. Human Heredity 77:63-72.; Ben Halim et al., 2015Ben Halim, N.; Nagara, M.; Regnault, B.; Hsouna, S.; Lasram, K.; Kefi, R.; Azaiez, H.; Khemira, L.; Saidane, R. and Ammar, S. B. 2015. Estimation of recent and ancient inbreeding in a small endogamous tunisian community through genomic runs of homozygosity. Annals of Human Genetics 79:402-417.), cattle (Mészáros et al., 2015Mészáros, G.; Boison, S. A.; O’Brien, A. M. P.; Ferenčaković, M.; Curik, I.; Da Silva, M. V. B.; Utsunomiya, Y. T.; Garcia, J. F. and Sölkner, J. 2015. Genomic analysis for managing small and endangered populations: a case study in Tyrol Grey cattle. Frontiers in Genetics 6. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2015.00173
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; Zavarez et al., 2015Zavarez, L. B.; Utsunomiya, Y. T.; Carmo, A. S.; Neves, H. H. R.; Carvalheiro, R.; Ferenčaković, M.; Pérez O’Brien, A. M.; Curik, I.; Cole, J. B. and Van Tassell, C. 2015. Assessment of autozygosity in Nellore cows (Bos indicus) through high-density SNP genotypes. Frontiers in Genetics 6. doi:10.3389/fgene.2015.00005.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2015.00005...
; Zhang et al., 2015aZhang, Q.; Calus, M.; Guldbrandtsen, B.; Lund, M. S. and Sahana, G. 2015a. Estimation of inbreeding using pedigree, 50k SNP chip genotypes and full sequence data in three cattle breeds. BMC Genetics 16:88.), pig (Gomez-Raya et al., 2015Gomez-Raya, L.; Rodríguez, C.; Barragán, C. and Silió, L. 2015. Genomic inbreeding coefficients based on the distribution of the length of runs of homozygosity in a closed line of Iberian pigs. Genetics Selection Evolution 47:1-15.; Saura et al., 2015Saura, M.; Fernández, A.; Varona, L.; Fernández, A. I.; de Cara, M. Á. R.; Barragán, C. and Villanueva, B. 2015. Detecting inbreeding depression for reproductive traits in Iberian pigs using genome-wide data. Genetics Selection Evolution 47:1-9.; Silió et al., 2015Silió, L.; Barragán, C.; Fernández, A.; García-Casco, J. and Rodriguez, M. 2015. Assessing effective population size, coancestry and inbreeding effects on litter size using the pedigree and SNP data in closed lines of the Iberian pig breed. Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics 133:145-154.), horse (Metzger et al., 2015Metzger, J.; Karwath, M.; Tonda, R.; Beltran, S.; Águeda, L.; Gut, M.; Gut, I. G. and Distl, O. 2015. Runs of homozygosity reveal signatures of positive selection for reproduction traits in breed and non-breed horses. BMC Genomics 16:1-14.), poultry (Orazietti, 2015Orazietti, J. 2015. Islands and desert: Patterns of runs of homozygosity in chicken breeds. Master thesis. BOKU-University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna.), dog (Mortlock et al., 2016Mortlock, S.-A.; Khatkar, M. S. and Williamson, P. 2016. Comparative analysis of genome diversity in bullmastiff dogs. PloS One 11: e0147941.), and sheep and goat (Al-Mamun et al., 2015Al-Mamun, H. A.; Clark, S. A.; Kwan, P. and Gondro, C. 2015. Genome-wide linkage disequilibrium and genetic diversity in five populations of Australian domestic sheep. Genetics Selection Evolution 47:1-14.; Kim et al., 2016Kim, E.-S.; Elbeltagy, A. R.; Aboul-Naga, A. M.; Rischkowsky, B.; Sayre, B.; Mwacharo, J. M, and Rothschild, M. F. 2016. Multiple genomic signatures of selection in goats and sheep indigenous to a hot arid environment. Heredity 116:255-264.) populations as well as in wild (Iacolina et al., 2016Iacolina, L.; Scandura, M.; Goedbloed, D. J.;Alexandri, P.; Crooijmans, R.; Larson, G.; Archibald, A.; Apollonio, M.; Schook, L. B. and Groenen, M. A. 2016. Genomic diversity and differentiation of a managed island wild boar population. Heredity 116:60-67.), and captive populations (Nuijten et al. 2016Nuijten, R. J.; Bosse, M.; Crooijmans, R. P.; Madsen, O.; Schaftenaar, W.; Ryder, O. A.; Groenen, M. A. and Megens, H.-J. 2016. The use of genomics in conservation management of the endangered visayan warty pig (Sus cebifrons). International Journal of Genomics, doi: 10.1155/2016/5613862.
https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/5613862...
). Not only it is a measure of true or realized inbreeding that is sensitive to the selection, the concept of FROH is easy to interpret and has several features that surpass FPED in estimating negative consequences of inbreeding. Thus, FROH does allow its partition to the chromosomal level, specific chromosomal segments, and even SNP. For example, chromosomal inbreeding can be calculated as FROH–CHORMOSOME = ∑LROH-CHORMOSOME/LCHORMOSOME’ in which ∑LROH–CHORMOSOME is the total length of all ROH addressed to the chromosome in question, according to a priory specified threshold of succeeding number of homozygous SNP obtained from the chip arrays, while LCHROMOSOME is the specified length of the related autosomal chromosome covered by SNP in chip. Furthermore, the length of the ROH used as a threshold in defining autozygosity is functionally related to the expected distance (in generations) to the parental common ancestor, which further can be used as proxy for the reference population. Thus, recombination events interrupt long chromosome segments and, over time, very long autozygous ROH are expected to originate from recent common ancestors. On the other side, most of short ROH are likely derived from more remote ancestors, while some short ROH might persist in a population for a very long time, much above defined base population, as a consequence of the lack of recombination or just by chance. This phenomenon is called background noise of ROH and has stronger magnitude in short ROH. In this way, ROH length can give insight into the age of inbreeding, as described in Howrigan et al. (2011)Howrigan, D.; Simonson, M. and Keller, M. 2011. Detecting autozygosity through runs of homozygosity: a comparison of three autozygosity detection algorithms. BMC Genomics 12:460. and Curik et al. (2014)Curik, I.; Ferenčaković, M. and Sölkner, J. 2014. Inbreeding and runs of homozygosity: a possible solution to an old problem. Livestock Science 166:26-34..

Genomic analysis of the negative consequences of inbreeding

In a classical quantitative genetics framework, negative consequences of inbreeding are separated to the increase in the incidence of recessively inherited disorders and to inbreeding depression. The main difference between the two phenomena is in the definition of the trait we are considering. Thus, we can look at the incidence of a single gene specific defect as a single gene trait inherited according to Mendelian rules. We can easily extend the concept of a single specific defect to a more complex variable defined as appearance of any single gene-inherited defect. If so, our model shifts to oligogenic inheritance. In contrast, inbreeding depression is originally defined for the quantitative trait with no sampling variation in the inbreeding level for individuals with the same FPED (for example, all littermates have the equal FPED) and with the rate of inbreeding at selected loci that is expected to be the same as at neutral loci. Thus, estimation of inbreeding depression based on FPED (Kristensen and Sorensen, 2005Kristensen, T. and Sorensen, A. 2005. Inbreeding - lessons from animal breeding, evolutionary biology and conservation genetics. Animal Science 80:121-133.; Casellas et al., 2009Casellas, J.; Piedrafita, J.; Caja, G. and Varona, L. 2009. Analysis of founder-specific inbreeding depression on birth weight in Ripollesa lambs. Journal of Animal Science 87:72-79.; Leroy, 2014Leroy, G. 2014. Inbreeding depression in livestock species: review and meta-analysis. Animal Genetics 45:618-628.) was perfectly adapted for the infinitesimal model (Fisher, 1918Fisher, R. A. 1918. The correlation between relatives on the supposition of Mendelian inheritance. Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh 52:399-433.). Unfortunately, infinitesimal model (modification with dominance) does not correspond well to the inheritance of all traits, particularly traits controlled by a finite number of loci (Curik et al., 2001Curik, I.; Sölkner, J. and Stipic, N. 2001. The influence of selection and epistasis on inbreeding depression estimates. Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics 118:247-262., 2002Curik, I.; Solkner, J., Stipic, N. 2002. Effects of models with finite loci, selection, dominance, epistasis and linkage on inbreeding coefficients based on pedigree and genotypic information. Journal of Animal Breeding and Genetics 119:101-115.). Latest findings on genetic architecture of livestock species points to the mixed inheritance model, which states that a quantitative trait is controlled by a few genes with large effects and many genes with small effects (Kemper and Goddard, 2012Kemper, K. E. and Goddard, M. E. 2012. Understanding and predicting complex traits: knowledge from cattle. Human Molecular Genetics 21:R45-R51.; Kemper et al., 2012Kemper, K. E.; Visscher, P. M. and Goddard, M. E. 2012. Genetic architecture of body size in mammals. Genome Biology 13:244.; Curik et al., 2013Curik, I.; Druml, T.; Seltenhammer, M.; Sundström, E.; Pielberg, G. R.; Andersson, L. and Sölkner, J. 2013. Complex inheritance of melanoma and pigmentation of coat and skin in grey horses. PLoS Genetics 9:e1003248.). Thus, to achieve better understanding of the negative effects of inbreeding, we need new methods and approaches that will respect the sampling nature of inbreeding and genetic architecture of a trait. Moreover, the complete challenge is to cover the whole spectrum of trait inheritance, starting from single gene-inherited defects to oligogenic models and across mixed inheritance models to pure polygenic models close to the infinitesimal model. We are quite much enthusiastic that the concept of FROH has all properties of an ideal inbreeding (autozygosity) coefficient needed to respond to all stated challenges. Here, we are introducing some ideas and approaches that can lead to the satisfactory solutions and development of well settled methodologies.

Whole genome estimation of inbreeding depression

As discussed in this present review and in a number of studies (Curik et al., 2014Curik, I.; Ferenčaković, M. and Sölkner, J. 2014. Inbreeding and runs of homozygosity: a possible solution to an old problem. Livestock Science 166:26-34.; Marras et al., 2014Marras, G.; Gaspa, G.; Sorbolini, S.; Dimauro, C.; Ajmone-Marsan, P.; Valentini, A.; Williams, J. L. and Macciotta, N. P. P. 2014. Analysis of runs of homozygosity and their relationship with inbreeding in five cattle breeds farmed in Italy. Animal Genetics 46:110-121.; Zhang et al., 2015aZhang, Q.; Calus, M.; Guldbrandtsen, B.; Lund, M. S. and Sahana, G. 2015a. Estimation of inbreeding using pedigree, 50k SNP chip genotypes and full sequence data in three cattle breeds. BMC Genetics 16:88.), FROH is a better estimate of whole genome autozygosity of an individual than FPED; thus, it is expected to replace FPED in the estimation of inbreeding depression. Moreover, the variance of FROH is higher than variance of FPED, leading to the higher power of the regression analyses. This has been demonstrated in a computer simulation by Keller et al. (2011Keller, M. and Visscher, P. and Goddard, M. 2011. Quantification of inbreeding due to distant ancestors and its detection using dense SNP data. Genetics 189:237-249.), who showed that FROH outperforms FPED in the estimation of genome-wide autozygosity and detection of inbreeding depression. Following the recommendation of Keller et al. (2011)Keller, M. and Visscher, P. and Goddard, M. 2011. Quantification of inbreeding due to distant ancestors and its detection using dense SNP data. Genetics 189:237-249., or just logically replacing FPED with FROH in a regression analysis, was the most obvious way, done by a number of researchers, on how to proceed in estimation of inbreeding depression (e.g., Keller et al., 2012Keller, M. C.; Simonson, M. A.; Ripke, S.; Neale, B. M.; Gejman, P. V.; Howrigan, D. P.; Lee, S. H.; Lencz, T.; Levinson, D. F. and Sullivan, P. F. 2012. The Schizophrenia Psychiatric Genome-Wide Association Study Consortium. Runs of homozygosity implicate autozygosity as a schizophrenia risk factor. PLoS Genetics 8: e1002656.). Thus, in dairy cattle, for increase of 1% of FROH, Bjelland et al. (2013)Bjelland, D.; Weigel, K.; Vukasinovic, N. and Nkrumah, J. 2013. Evaluation of inbreeding depression in Holstein cattle using whole-genome SNP markers and alternative measures of genomic inbreeding. Journal of Dairy Science 96:4697-4706. observed reduction of total milk yield to 205 days postpartum of 20 kg, increases in days open of 1.72 day, increase in maternal calving difficulty of 0.03 on a 5-point scale, and decrease in some linear-type traits. Pryce et al. (2014)Pryce, J.; Haile-Mariam, M.; Goddard, M. and Hayes, B. 2014. Identification of genomic regions associated with inbreeding depression in Holstein and Jersey dairy cattle. Genetics Selection Evolution 46:71. confirmed inbreeding depression for milk production with stronger unfavorable effects for FROH related to closer ancestors (longer ROH) in Holstein and Jersey populations. Ferenčaković (2015)Ferenčaković, M. 2015. Molecular dissection of inbreeding depression for semen quality traits in cattle. PhD thesis. University of Zagreb, Zagreb. and Ferenčaković et al. (2017)Ferenčaković, M.; Sölkner, J.; Kapš, M. and Curik, I. 2017. Genome-wide mapping and estimation of inbreeding depression of semen quality traits in a cattle population. Journal of Dairy Science 100:4721-4730. doi: 10.3168/jds.2016-12164.
https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.2016-12164...
found inbreeding depression for the total number of spermatozoa per ejaculate (P<0.05; 1% of the mean per 1% of FR0H>2Mb), but not for the percent of live spermatozoa in Fleckvieh bulls. Saura et al. (2015)Saura, M.; Fernández, A.; Varona, L.; Fernández, A. I.; de Cara, M. Á. R.; Barragán, C. and Villanueva, B. 2015. Detecting inbreeding depression for reproductive traits in Iberian pigs using genome-wide data. Genetics Selection Evolution 47:1-9. found significant reduction of 0.23 for the number of piglets born alive (P<0.01) and total number of piglets born (P<0.05) for 10% increase in FROH>0.5Mb in Guadyerbas pigs. Significant inbreeding depression was also observed for the close inbreeding (FROH>5Mb), while estimates were not significant for regression on remote inbreeding (FROH0.5Mb-5Mb).

Genomic mapping of loci contributing to inbreeding depression

All methods in which inbreeding depression is analysed as a regression of phenotypic value on overall inbreeding, regardless if it was derived from pedigree or molecular information, assume that autozygosity is equal on the whole genome. Experimental evidence of the genome-wide autozygosity patterns clearly shows that this is quite an unrealistic assumption as there is quite large variation of autozygosity within a genome (Pemberton et al., 2012Pemberton, T.; Absher, D.; Feldman, M.; Myers, R.; Rosenberg, N. and Li, J. 2012. Genomic patterns of homozygosity in worldwide human populations. American Journal of Human Genetics 91:275-292.; Sölkner et al., 2014Sölkner, J.; Ferencakovic, M.; Karimi, Z.; Perez O’Brien, A. M.; Mészáros, G.; Eaglen, S.; Boison, S. A. and Curik, I. 2014. Extremely non-uniform patterns of runs of homozygosity in bovine populations. p.1-4. In: Proceedings of the 10th World Congress of Genetics Applied to Livestock Production, Vancouver, BC.; Orazietti, 2015Orazietti, J. 2015. Islands and desert: Patterns of runs of homozygosity in chicken breeds. Master thesis. BOKU-University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna.). Thus, one should be aware that when SNP/regional/chromosomal autozygosity is weakly correlated with the overall inbreeding coefficient, either FPED, FPLINK, or FROH, their contribution to inbreeding depression is not properly accounted. To illustrate this, we presented correlations between FPED and FROH>4Mb with all 29 autosomal inbreeding coefficients ROH>4Mb (from FROH>4Mb-CHROMOSOME1 to FROH>4Mb-CHROMOSOME29) (Figure 1) and showed the unequal distribution of SNP autozygosity in Brown Swiss cattle genome (Figure 2).

Figure 1
Radar plot of Pearson correlation coefficients between A, pedigree inbreeding coefficients (FPED), and B, ROH>4Mb inbreeding coefficient (FROH>4Mb), with 29 autosomal inbreeding coefficients ROH>4Mb (from FROH>4Mb-CHROMOSOME1 to FROH>4Mb-CHROMOSOME29).
Figure 2
Unequal distribution of SNP autozygosity in Brown Swiss cattle genome (ROH>4Mb).

In the context of shifting from infinitesimal (with dominance) toward oligogenic and mixed inheritance models, new approaches and ideas on how to estimate contribution of inbreeding depression for small regions or individual genes are needed. Recently, three different approaches have been used. In the first approach, an extension of the whole genome inbreeding depression estimation, the whole chromosomes or chromosomal segments divided into pieces were modelled in a classical approach as covariates (Keller et al., 2012Keller, M. C.; Simonson, M. A.; Ripke, S.; Neale, B. M.; Gejman, P. V.; Howrigan, D. P.; Lee, S. H.; Lencz, T.; Levinson, D. F. and Sullivan, P. F. 2012. The Schizophrenia Psychiatric Genome-Wide Association Study Consortium. Runs of homozygosity implicate autozygosity as a schizophrenia risk factor. PLoS Genetics 8: e1002656.; Ferenčaković, 2015Ferenčaković, M. 2015. Molecular dissection of inbreeding depression for semen quality traits in cattle. PhD thesis. University of Zagreb, Zagreb.; Saura et al., 2015Saura, M.; Fernández, A.; Varona, L.; Fernández, A. I.; de Cara, M. Á. R.; Barragán, C. and Villanueva, B. 2015. Detecting inbreeding depression for reproductive traits in Iberian pigs using genome-wide data. Genetics Selection Evolution 47:1-9.). In the second approach, an extension of a genome-wise association analysis, each SNP was jointly modelled for the ROH status (0/1) and gene substitution effect (Pryce et al., 2014Pryce, J.; Haile-Mariam, M.; Goddard, M. and Hayes, B. 2014. Identification of genomic regions associated with inbreeding depression in Holstein and Jersey dairy cattle. Genetics Selection Evolution 46:71.; Ferenčaković, 2015Ferenčaković, M. 2015. Molecular dissection of inbreeding depression for semen quality traits in cattle. PhD thesis. University of Zagreb, Zagreb.; Ferenčaković et al., 2017Ferenčaković, M.; Sölkner, J.; Kapš, M. and Curik, I. 2017. Genome-wide mapping and estimation of inbreeding depression of semen quality traits in a cattle population. Journal of Dairy Science 100:4721-4730. doi: 10.3168/jds.2016-12164.
https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.2016-12164...
). Howard et al. (2015)Howard, J. T.; Haile-Mariam, M.; Pryce, J. E. and Maltecca, C. 2015. Investigation of regions impacting inbreeding depression and their association with the additive genetic effect for United States and Australia Jersey dairy cattle. BMC Genomics 16:813. upgraded that approach by searching for interactions between ROH showing inbreeding depression, using sophisticated regression tree analysis generated by Gradient Boosted Machine algorithm.

Dissection of the inbreeding depression architecture

While identifying (mapping) regions that considerably contribute to inbreeding depression is very important for the conservation and breeding management of the studied population, it does not provide the full insight into genetic architecture of inbreeding depression. For complete understanding of the inbreeding depression mechanism, it is necessary to know the number of loci involved, their inheritance mode and magnitudes of estimated effects. An impressive approach to resolve the genetic architecture of inbreeding depression was presented by Ayroles et al. (2009)Ayroles, J. F.; Hughes, K. A.; Rowe, K. C.; Reedy, M. M.; Rodriguez-Zas, S. L.; Drnevich, J. M.; Cáceres, C. E. and Paige, K. N. 2009. A genomewide assessment of inbreeding depression: gene number, function, and mode of action. Conservation Biology 23:920-930., who analysed the variation of gene expression across the genome between inbred and outbred lines of Drosophila. The final conclusion of Ayroles et al. (2009)Ayroles, J. F.; Hughes, K. A.; Rowe, K. C.; Reedy, M. M.; Rodriguez-Zas, S. L.; Drnevich, J. M.; Cáceres, C. E. and Paige, K. N. 2009. A genomewide assessment of inbreeding depression: gene number, function, and mode of action. Conservation Biology 23:920-930. was that “a large proportion of the genome (i.e. large number of genes) is involved in the expression of inbreeding depression”. Here, we take opportunity to describe the concept that, following the standard quantitative genetics terminology, can be used in dissecting inbreeding depression.

Thus, according to the Falconer and Mackay (1996)Falconer, D. S. and Mackay, T. F. C. 1996. Introduction to quantitative genetics. 4th ed. Longman, Essex, UK. 464p. notation, for a single gene bi-allelic locus, genotypic values and expected genotypic frequencies for the Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE) and partially inbred population can be expressed (as in Table 1). Following notation (Table 1), the mathematical expectation (mean) of the HWE population is in formula 1:

(1) μ HWE = a ( p 2 ) + d ( 2 pq ) a ( q 2 ) = a ( p q ) + 2 pqd
Table 1
Single gene bi-allelic locus genotypic values and expected genotypic frequencies in Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium (HWE) and partially inbred population (Falconer and Mackay, 1996Falconer, D. S. and Mackay, T. F. C. 1996. Introduction to quantitative genetics. 4th ed. Longman, Essex, UK. 464p.; modified)

while the mathematical expectation of the partially inbred populations is in formula 2:

(2) μ F = a ( p 2 + pqF ) + d ( 2 pq 2 pqF ) a ( q 2 + pqF ) = a ( p q ) + 2 pqd 2 pqF = μ HWE 2 pqdF

From the above formula, it is obvious that in a single gene bi-allelic locus, inbreeding depression depends on a positive expression 2pqdF and its magnitude is proportionally determined by allele frequency (highest at intermediate frequencies), d value (no inbreeding depression in additive model as d = 0), and inbreeding level (F). In the absence of epistasis, the single locus model can be extended to more loci by summation across all loci included in the analyses; thus, inbreeding depression can be expressed by positive expression 2ΣpqdF. The expression 2ΣpqdF can only be positive in the presence of directional dominance, e.g. constant selection pressure that is not so effective with overdominance, dominance, and partial dominance gene action as it is with additive, negative dominance, negative partial dominance, and underdominance. That is why inbreeding depression is present for traits that are under constant selection pressure such as reproduction and survival. In domestic animal populations, long selection pressure can affect production traits and create inbreeding depression.

In the FROH concept, for each SNP, we are ascribing indicator variable 1 for SNP that are in ROH or 0 for SNP that are not in ROH. This means that for each SNP, inbreeding level (F) is just the incidence of being in a ROH. After calculating allele frequencies of each SNP (p and q), we only have to estimate dominance value (d) to know all unknowns in the single locus inbreeding depression formula (2ΣpqdF). Estimation of dominance deviations in the context of genomic information has been described in details by Wellmann and Bennewitz (2011)Wellmann, R. and Bennewitz, J. 2011. The contribution of dominance to the understanding of quantitative genetic variation. Genetics Research 93:139-154. and Vitezica et al. (2013)Vitezica, Z. G.; Varona, L. and Legarra, A. 2013. On the additive and dominant variance and covariance of individuals within the genomic selection scope. Genetics 195:1223-1230.. Thus, with the single locus inbreeding depression concept, we would be able to dissect inbreeding depression to chromosomes (Figure 3), chromosomal regions, and single SNP. Still, summing to the regional or chromosomal inbreeding depression is not a trivial task as summing inbreeding depression estimates of neighboring loci would introduce overestimation caused by summation of confounded effects. The simplest solution is to sum only SNP that are below certain linkage disequilibrium, i.e. that are pruned, but it is not clear where to set up the threshold. The problem behind is quite similar to the regional/ chromosomal decomposition (partitioning) of variance components using genomic information. Obviously, more work has to be done to provide whole procedure. However, better understanding of inbreeding depression architecture can be achieved from the knowledge on distribution of single loci inbreeding depressions. Thus, for the male sperm quality in Brown Swiss bulls, results from our pilot study (Ferenčaković et al., 2014Ferenčaković, M.; Curik, I. and Sölkner, J. 2014. Modelling genome wise dissection of inbreeding depression for bull fertility traits. Livestock Genomic Resources in a Changing World Conference Cardiff, UK.) showed considerable dominance polygenic component contributing to the inbreeding depression, while the largest single locus contribution to inbreeding depression (2pqdF/2ΣpqdF) was 0.06%, 0.04%, and 0.05% for volume of ejaculate (mL), concentration of ejaculate (109/mL), and viable spermatozoa (%), respectively.

Figure 3
Illustration of the chromosomal contribution to the inbreeding depression (2∑pqdFROH>4Mb) in the Brown Swiss population (Ferencakovic et al., 2014Ferenčaković, M.; Curik, I. and Sölkner, J. 2014. Modelling genome wise dissection of inbreeding depression for bull fertility traits. Livestock Genomic Resources in a Changing World Conference Cardiff, UK.) for A, volume of ejaculate (mL), and B, concentration of ejaculate (109/mL).

Future opportunities

It is clear that technological advances that enabled genotyping of a large number of markers scattered through the whole genome have brought dynamics into inbreeding depression research. As shown in this review, the gate is open and we are just in the beginning, starting to collect empirical evidence and trying to develop appropriate analytical methodologies. Still, very little has been done in finding and establishing an efficient strategy that will reduce or eliminate detrimental load from genetically small populations. At the same time, modern livestock breeds are genetically narrowing, while, as a consequence, the accumulation of detrimental load is a problem of growing concern. However, technological progress is rapidly evolving and very soon we will have whole genome sequences available for a large number of animals at affordable price. The idea applied in Szpiech et al. (2013)Szpiech, Z. A.; Xu, J.; Pemberton, T. J.; Peng, W.; Zollner, S.; Rosenberg, N. A. and Li, J. Z. 2013. Long runs of homozygosity are enriched for deleterious variation. American Journal of Human Genetics 93:90-102., to analyse the pattern of detrimental variation from the exome sequence, offers quite ground-breaking opportunities. Thus, according to Szpiech et al. (2013)Szpiech, Z. A.; Xu, J.; Pemberton, T. J.; Peng, W.; Zollner, S.; Rosenberg, N. A. and Li, J. Z. 2013. Long runs of homozygosity are enriched for deleterious variation. American Journal of Human Genetics 93:90-102., a significantly greater fraction of all genome-wide predicted damaging homozygotes falls in ROH, especially in long ROH, than would be expected from the corresponding fraction of non-damaging homozygotes in ROH. In livestock breeding and conservation, the power and potential benefit of this concept were recognised very soon by Bosse et al. (2015)Bosse, M.; Megens, M.; Madsen, O.; Croojmans, R. P. M. A.; Ryder, O. A.; Austerlitz, F.; Groenen, M. A. M. and de Cara, M. A. R. 2015. Using genome-wide measures of coancestry to maintain diversity and fitness in endangered and domestic pig populations. Genome Research 25:970-981., Zhang et al. (2015b)Zhang, Q.; Guldbrandtsen, B.; Bosse, M.; Lund, M. S. and Sahana, G. 2015b. Runs of homozygosity and distribution of functional variants in the cattle genome. BMC Genomics 16:542., and Nuijten et al. (2016)Nuijten, R. J.; Bosse, M.; Crooijmans, R. P.; Madsen, O.; Schaftenaar, W.; Ryder, O. A.; Groenen, M. A. and Megens, H.-J. 2016. The use of genomics in conservation management of the endangered visayan warty pig (Sus cebifrons). International Journal of Genomics, doi: 10.1155/2016/5613862.
https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/5613862...
. We believe that this approach, when combined with estimation of inbreeding depression and some other innovative technologies such as gene editing (gene editing or genome editing is the insertion, deletion, or replacement of DNA at a specific site in the genome; Kim and Kim, 2014Kim, H. and Kim, J. S. 2014. A guide to genome engineering with programmable nuclease. Nature Reviews Genetics 15:321-334.), might open the door to the management of detrimental load in genetically small populations.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by a bilateral collaborative project involving the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sports and the Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education and Research (OeAD GmbH) (“Runs of homozygosity: detecting selection in livestock populations”). We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewer for valuable comments and suggestions that improved the quality of the original manuscript.

This paper was presented during the Symposium on Scientific Advances in Genetics and Animal Breeding at the First International Meeting of Advances in Animal Science held at Jaboticabal, São Paulo, Brazil, on June 8 to 10, 2016.

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Publication Dates

  • Publication in this collection
    Sept 2017

History

  • Received
    02 Dec 2016
  • Accepted
    20 May 2017
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