Variability in the Distributions of Single Nucleotide Polymorphism Effects in Livestock Populations

Abstract

Variability in the distributions of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) effects were investigated by simulation. Realised distributions after thousands of generations of selection were found to be sensitive to parameters relating to the genome size, SNP density, population size and the distribution of sampled SNP effects. In particular, the distributions were not generally exponential, and in some cases SNPs of smaller effect were less likely to segregate than SNPs of larger effect.