On the Relative Importance of Marker Heterozygosity and Intermarker
Distance in Gene Mapping
JD Terwilliger, Y Ding, J Ott
Genomics , 13(4), 951--956 (1992 Aug)
Abstract
Molecular biologists are often confronted with the problem of
whether they should try to generate large numbers of very closely
linked markers of low heterozygosity or smaller numbers of less
closely linked markers of high heterozygosity. In other words, What
is more important for gene mapping, high marker heterozygosity or
dense marker spacing? We investigated that problem by analytically
computing the expected lod score per meiosis in which the new locus
is informative and phase known. We also looked at the length of the
1-unit-of-lod-score support interval for the expected lod score from
100 such meioses. We found that while both quantities have an
influence on the number of meioses needed to find linkage, the
length of the support interval is almost entirely dependent on the
intermarker distance, for heterozygosities between 20 and 100%.
However, the probability of any given meiosis being phase known and
the ability to develop an accurate map of the markers are functions
of marker heterozygosity, further complicating the issue.
