Direct and Indirect Effects of Maternal, Paternal, and Offspring Genotypes: Trio-GCTA
Espen Moen Eilertsen1,2,3, Eshim Shahid Jami4, Tom A McAdams5,6
1Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, Forskningsveien 3A, 0373, Oslo, Norway. e.m.eilertsen@psykologi.uio.no.
Abstract:
Indirect genetic effects from relatives may result in misleading quantifications of heritability, but can also be of interest in their own right. In this paper we propose Trio-GCTA, a model for separating direct and indirect genetic effects when genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism data have been collected from parent-offspring trios. The model is applicable to phenotypes obtained from any of the family members. We discuss appropriate parameter interpretations and apply the method to three exemplar phenotypes: offspring birth weight, maternal relationship satisfaction, and paternal body-mass index, using real data from the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study (MoBa).
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