Simultaneous estimation of QTL parameters for mapping multiple traits

The analysis of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) aims at mapping and estimating the positions and effects of the genes that may affect the quantitative trait, and evaluating the relationship between the gene variation and the phenotype. In existing studies, most methods mainly focus on the association/linkage between multiple gene loci and one trait, in which some useful joint information of multiple traits may be ignored. In this paper, we proposed a method of simultaneously estimating all QTL parameters in the framework of multiple-trait multiple-interval mapping. Simulation results show that in accuracy aspect, the proposed method outperforms an existing method for mapping multiple traits. A real example is also provided to validate the performance of the new method.