Relatedness coefficients in pedigrees with inbred founders

Area of Science:

• Quantitative genetics
• Statistical genetics
• Computational biology

Background:

• Standard pedigree analysis methods face challenges with inbred founders.
• Efficient computation of relatedness coefficients is crucial for genetic studies.
• Constructibility of relatedness coefficients is a complex theoretical problem.

Purpose of the Study:

• To extend the standard pedigree analysis framework by incorporating inbred founders.
• To address practical challenges in calculating relatedness and condensed identity coefficients.
• To investigate the constructibility of relatedness coefficients and enable practical computational analysis.

Main Methods:

• Developed an extension to the standard pedigree analysis framework.
• Incorporated inbred founders to simplify relatedness coefficient calculations.
• Implemented computational methods in the R package ribd for analysis.

Main Results:

• Solved practical challenges in calculating coefficients of relatedness and condensed identity coefficients.
• Significantly expanded the class of pedigrees for which coefficients can be efficiently computed.
• Demonstrated that any theoretically admissible coefficients for noninbred individuals can be produced by a finite pedigree with inbred founders.

Conclusions:

• The framework with inbred founders offers efficient computation for a wider range of pedigrees.
• This approach enables practical computer analysis of general constructibility solutions for relatedness coefficients.
• The findings facilitate modeling background inbreeding as a continuous effect and advance genetic research applications.