Genome-wide scan for commons SNPs affecting bovine leukemia virus infection level in dairy cattle.

Background: Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) infection is omnipresent in dairy herds causing direct economic losses due to trade restrictions and lymphosarcoma-related deaths. Milk production drops and increase in the culling rate are also relevant and usually neglected. The BLV provirus persists throughout a lifetime and an inter-individual variation is observed in the level of infection (LI) in vivo.

Fine-mapping quantitative trait loci with a medium density marker panel: efficiency of population structures and comparison of linkage disequilibrium linkage analysis models.

Recently, a Haley-Knott-type regression method using combined linkage disequilibrium and linkage analyses (LDLA) was proposed to map quantitative trait loci (QTLs). Chromosome of 5 and 25 cM with 0·25 and 0·05 cM, respectively, between markers were simulated. The differences between the LDLA approaches with regard to QTL position accuracy were very limited, with a significantly better mean square error (MSE) with the LDLA regression (LDLA_reg) in sparse map cases; the contrary was observed, but not significantly, in dense map situations.