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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Disentangling directional and fluctuating asymmetry in a genome-wide association study.

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8 pages; International audience; Although directional and fluctuating asymmetry have been frequently assessed independently, they are indeed associated concepts both in theory and in practice. However, they can be difficult to disentangle in genome-wide association studies, where the appropriate shape statistics are not fully developed. Although the usage of Procrustes distances to overcome this problem may be tempting, this does not reliably help to identify the underlying genetic components of directional and fluctuating asymmetries. Here, similarities and differences among different approaches have revealed that the genetic component of the skull asymmetry in this population of mice is mostly associated to fluctuating asymmetry. This is coherent with the previous literature and it adds a note of caution in the study of asymmetry in a genomic context. The results also pointed out at the need of developing a multivariate framework to conduct shape analyses in general and asymmetry tests specifically. The combination of high-dimensional shape data and the vast number of genomic markers makes it challenging but the different statistical errors can hide important biological information.