Development of a structural growth curve model that considers the causal effect of initial phenotypes.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Growth curves have been widely used in genetic analyses to gain insights into the growth characteristics of both animals and plants. However, several questions remain unanswered, including how the initial phenotypes affect growth and what is the duration of any such impact. For beef cattle production in Japan, calves are procured from farms that specialize in reproduction and then moved to other farms where they are fattened to achieve their market/purchase value. However, the causal effect of growth, while calves are on the reproductive farms, on their growth during fattening remains unclear. To investigate this, we developed a model that combines a structural equation with a growth curve model. The causal effect was modeled with B-splines, which allows inference of the

SUBMITTER: Onogi A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6498631 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature