The metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a large-scale and expanding public-health and clinical threat worldwide. We investigated the determinants of MetS, assessed its prevalence and components and, estimated their genetic contribution, taking advantage of the special characteristics of Sardinian isolated populations. Inhabitants of 10 villages in Ogliastra region participated in a cross-sectional sur...

We estimated the genetic parameters for BW, reproduction, and parasite resistance traits to implement a breeding program for the Creole goat. The traits were preweaning BW at 70 d of age (BW70d), BW at 11 mo of age (BW11), fecal egg count at 11 mo of age (FEC11) for all animals, packed cell volumes of lactating does (PCV), and their fertility (FER) and litter size (LS). We analyzed about 30 yr ...

The discovery and prioritization of heritable phenotypes is a computational challenge in a variety of settings, including neuroimaging genetics and analyses of the vast phenotypic repositories in electronic health record systems and population-based biobanks. Classical estimates of heritability require twin or pedigree data, which can be costly and difficult to acquire. Genome-wide complex trai...

Heritability for incidence of entropion was estimated in an experimental flock of purebred (Columbia (C), Polypay (P), Rambouillet (R), Suffolk (S), and Targhee (T)) and crossbred (from matings of Finnsheep rams with C, R and T ewes, from Merino X R matings, and from miscellaneous other matings) lambs. Data from 1986 to 1994 which included 39 440 records were analyzed using a multiple trait REM...

This study was conducted to estimate the additive genetic components of calf mortality in the first month of age, calving difficulty, and birth weight in Holstein dairy cows in the central regions of Iran. The records comprised 61,200 calves born between 1990 and 2011 from 60 dairy herds. Different threshold-linear models in three groups of univariate, bivariate, and multivariate models were us...

Litter size is an important reproductive trait as it makes a major contribution to fitness. Generally, traits closely related to fitness show low heritability perhaps because of the corrosive effects of directional natural selection on the additive genetic variance. Nonetheless, low heritability does not imply, necessarily, a complete absence of genetic variation because genetic interactions (e...

Modern genetic mapping is plagued by the "missing heritability" problem, which refers to the discordance between the estimated heritabilities of quantitative traits and the variance accounted for by mapped causative variants. One major potential explanation for the missing heritability is allelic heterogeneity, in which there are multiple causative variants at each causative gene with only a fr...

Considerable variability exists in patterns of brain aging within and across individuals. Quantifying familial contributions to brain structure in late life may help us understand this variability. We estimated heritability of gray and white matter volumes and cortical thickness in a sample of older adult full siblings (2-4 individuals per pedigree; N = 75). Estimation of heritability was based...