The Collaborative Cross (CC) is a renewable mouse resource that mimics the genetic diversity in humans. The recombinant inbred intercrosses (RIX) generated from CC recombinant inbred (RI) lines share similar genetic structures to those of F(2) individuals. In contrast to F(2) mice, genotypes of RIX can be inferred from the genotypes of their RI parents and can be produced repeatedly. Also, RIX mice do not typically share the same degree of relatedness. This unbalanced genetic relatedness requires careful statistical modeling to avoid a large number of false positive findings. For complex traits, mapping multiple genes simultaneously is arguably more powerful than mapping one gene at a time. In this article, we describe how we have developed a Bayesian quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping method that simultaneously deals with the special genetic architecture of RIX and maps multiple genes. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated by extensive simulations. In addition, for a given set of RI lines, there are numerous ways to generate RIX samples. To provide a general guideline on future RIX studies, we compare several RIX designs through simulations.
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