Variance components model with disequilibria.

Abstract

The variance components (VC) model has been popular for genetic analysis. It has received wide applications in a variety of genetic practices, and been extended to various forms for different settings. However, most of the existing VC models are, explicitly or implicitly, under the assumption of the Hardy-Weinberg and/or linkage equilibria, which is impractical in some realistic settings since more or less deviations from this assumption are common. We propose a new VC model that incorporates both these disequilibria, and includes the existing models as special cases. The corresponding variance components are computed for some commonly used relative pairs conditional on the observed marker identity-by-descent data. Parameters can be estimated by the traditional methods such as the maximum likelihood estimate. Simulation studies suggest that this extended model improves inference significantly over the existing models when deviations of these disequilibria are present.