Title: "Additivity and trans-acting effects on gene expression in male Drosophila simulans"
Speaker: Dr. Lauren McIntyre, Department of Agronomy, Purdue University
Place: Stanley Coulter (SC) 239; Tuesday, October 26, 2004; 4:30pm

Abstract

Understanding how genetic variation is maintained begins with a comprehensive description of what types of genetic variation exist, the extent and magnitude of the variation, and patterns discernable in that variation. However, such studies have focused primarily on DNA sequence data and have ignored genetic variation at other hierarchical levels of genetic information. Microarray technology permits an examination of genetic variation at the level of mRNA abundance. Utilizing a roundrobin design, we present a quantitative description of variation in mRNA abundance in terms of GCA (general combining ability, or additive variance). We test whether genes significant for GCA are randomly distributed across chromosomes, and use a nonparametric approach to demonstrate that the magnitude of the variation is not random for GCA. We find that there is a paucity of genes significant for GCA on the X relative to the autosomes. The overall magnitude of the effects for GCA on the X tends to be lower than on the autosomes, and is contributed by rare alleles of larger effect. This non-random patterning of genetic variation in gene expression data with respect to chromosomal context may be due to hemizygosity in the male.


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