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Assortative Mating Biases Marker-based Heritability Estimators

View ORCID ProfileRichard Border, Sean O’Rourke, Teresa de Candia, Michael E. Goddard, Peter M. Visscher, Loic Yengo, Mathew Jones, Matthew C. Keller
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.18.436091
Richard Border
1Departments of Neurology and Computer Science, University of California, Los Angeles
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  • For correspondence: border.richard@gmail.com
Sean O’Rourke
2Department of Mathematics, University of Colorado Boulder
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Teresa de Candia
3Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder
4Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado Boulder
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Michael E. Goddard
5Faculty of Veterinary and Agricultural Science, University of Melbourne
6Biosciences Research Division, Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources
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Peter M. Visscher
7Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland
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Loic Yengo
7Institute for Molecular Bioscience, University of Queensland
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Mathew Jones
3Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder
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Matthew C. Keller
3Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder
4Institute for Behavioral Genetics, University of Colorado Boulder
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  • For correspondence: border.richard@gmail.com
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Abstract

Many complex traits are subject to assortative mating (AM), with recent molecular genetic findings confirming longstanding theoretical predictions that AM alters genetic architecture by inducing long range dependence across causal variants. However, all marker-based heritability estimators assume mating is random. We provide mathematical and simulation-based evidence demonstrating that both method-of-moments estimators and likelihood-based estimators produce biased estimates in the presence of AM and that common approaches to account for population structure fail to mitigate this bias. Then, examining height and educational attainment in the UK Biobank, we demonstrate that these biases affect real world traits. Finally, we derive corrected heritability estimators for traits under equilibrium AM.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted March 20, 2021.
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Assortative Mating Biases Marker-based Heritability Estimators
Richard Border, Sean O’Rourke, Teresa de Candia, Michael E. Goddard, Peter M. Visscher, Loic Yengo, Mathew Jones, Matthew C. Keller
bioRxiv 2021.03.18.436091; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.18.436091
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Assortative Mating Biases Marker-based Heritability Estimators
Richard Border, Sean O’Rourke, Teresa de Candia, Michael E. Goddard, Peter M. Visscher, Loic Yengo, Mathew Jones, Matthew C. Keller
bioRxiv 2021.03.18.436091; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.03.18.436091

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