Networks of inbreeding coefficients in a selected population of rabbits

10 Pág.The correlation between pedigree and genomic-based inbreeding coefficients is usually discussed in the literature. However, some of these correlations could be spurious. Using partial correlations and information theory, it is possible to distinguish a significant association between two variables which is independent from associations with a third variable. The objective of this study is to implement partial correlations and information theory to assess the relationship between different inbreeding coefficients using a selected population of rabbits. Data from pedigree and genomic information from a 200K SNP chip were available. After applying filtering criteria, the data set comprised 437 animals genotyped for 114,604 autosomal SNP. Fifteen pedigree- and genome-based inbreeding coefficients were estimated and used to build a network. Recent inbreeding coefficient based on runs of homozygosity had 9 edges linking it with different inbreeding coefficients. Partial correlations and information theory approach allowed to infer meaningful associations between inbreeding coefficients and highlighted the importance of the recent inbreeding based on runs of homozygosity, but a good proxy of it could be those pedigree-based definitions reflecting recent inbreeding.This study was supported by the European Unions' Horizon 2020 Research & Innovation programme under grant agreement Nº 633531 – FEED-A-GENE. This work was also supported by INIA (RTA2014-00015-C2-01) and GDivSelGen action (INRA SelGen metaprogram). Support from the CSIRO-INRA Linkage Grant is gratefully acknowledged. Authors are also grateful to the GenoToul bioinformatics platform Toulouse Midi-Pyrenees for providing computing and storage resources.Peer reviewe