Genotype calling of triploid offspring from diploid parents

• Published in: Genetics Selection Evolution
• Main Authors: Grashei, Kim Erik, Ødegård, Jørgen, Meuwissen, Theo H. E.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: BioMed Central 2020
• Subjects: Research Article; Atlantic salmon; Salmo salar
• Online Access: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7081531/; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32188420; https://doi.org/10.1186/s12711-020-00534-w

BACKGROUND: Polyploidy is widespread in animals and especially in plants. Different kinds of ploidies exist, for example, hexaploidy in wheat, octaploidy in strawberries, and diploidy, triploidy, tetraploidy, and pseudo-tetraploidy (partly tetraploid) in fish. Triploid offspring from diploid parents occur frequently in the wild in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) and, as with triploidy in general, the triploid individuals are sterile. Induced triploidy in Atlantic salmon is common practice to produce sterile fish. In Norwegian aquaculture, production of sterile triploid fish is an attempt by government and industry to limit genetic introgression between wild and farmed fish. However, triploid fish may have traits and properties that differ from those of diploids. Investigating the genetics behind traits in triploids has proved challenging because genotype calling of genetic markers in triploids is not supported by standard software. Our aim was to develop a method that can be used for genotype calling of genetic markers in triploid individuals. RESULTS: Allele signals were produced for 381 triploid Atlantic salmon offspring using a 56 K Thermo Fisher GeneTitan genotyping platform. Genotypes were successfully called by applying finite normal mixture models to the (transformed) allele signals. Subsets of markers were filtered by quality control statistics for use with downstream analyses. The quality of the called genotypes was sufficient to allow for assignment of diploid parents to the triploid offspring and to discriminate between maternal and paternal parents from autosomal inheritance patterns. In addition, as the maternal inheritance in triploid offspring is identical to gynogenetic inheritance, the maternal recombination pattern for each chromosome could be mapped by using a similar approach as that used in gene-centromere mapping. CONCLUSIONS: We show that calling of dense marker genotypes for triploid individuals is feasible. The resulting genotypes can be used in parentage assignment of triploid offspring ...