Genome-wide association studies from spoken phenotypic descriptions: a proof of concept from maize field studies.

ABSTRACT: We present a novel approach to genome-wide association studies (GWAS) by leveraging unstructured, spoken phenotypic descriptions to identify genomic regions associated with maize traits. Utilizing the Wisconsin Diversity panel, we collected spoken descriptions of Zea mays ssp. mays traits, converting these qualitative observations into quantitative data amenable to GWAS analysis. First, we determined that visually striking phenotypes could be detected from unstructured spoken phenotypic descriptions. Next, we developed two methods to process the same descriptions to derive the trait plant height, a well-characterized phenotypic feature in maize: (1) a semantic similarity metric that assigns a score based on the resemblance of each observation to the concept of 'tallness' and (2) a manual s

SUBMITTER: Yanarella CF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11373645 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature