Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012 May;108(5):563-8.
doi: 10.1038/hdy.2011.124. Epub 2012 Jan 11.

A brief note on the resemblance between relatives in the presence of population stratification

R Sebro  1 , N J Risch
Affiliations

A brief note on the resemblance between relatives in the presence of population stratification

R Sebro et al. Heredity (Edinb). 2012 May.

Abstract

Population stratification occurs when a study population is comprised of several sub-populations, and can result in increased false positive findings in genomewide-association studies. Recently published work shows that sub-population-specific positive assortative mating at the genotypic level results in population stratification. We show that if the allele frequency of a single nucleotide polymorphism responsible for a trait varies between sub-populations and there is no dominance variance, then the heritability of the trait increases, primarily due to an increase in the additive genetic variance of the trait.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Correlation between relative pairs assuming HWE compared to that calculated assuming population stratification using a single-locus model.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Genetic correlation (z-axis) between parent-offspring pairs in the presence of population stratification using a two-locus model.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Genetic correlation (z-axis) between sib-pairs in the presence of population stratification using a two-locus model.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Genetic correlation (z-axis) between unrelated individuals in the presence of population stratification using a two-locus model.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Crow TJ. The missing genes: what happened to the heritability of psychiatric disorders. Mol Psychiatry. 2011;16:362–364. - PubMed
    1. Falconer DS, Mackay TFC. Introduction to Quantitative Genetics. Longman: Harlow, UK; 1996.
    1. Fisher RA. The correlation between relatives on the supposition of Mendelian inheritance. Trans R Soc Edinburgh. 1918;52:399–433.
    1. Hill WG, Goddard ME, Visscher PM. Data and theory point to mainly additive genetic variance for complex traits. PLoS Genet. 2008;4:e000008. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Perola M. Genome-wide association approaches for identifying loci for human height genes. Best Pract Res Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2011;25:19–23. - PubMed

Publication types