Novel epistatic QTL for chemical body composition and accretion as well as feed efficiency in pigs

Most quantitative trait loci (QTL) studies have focussed on the identification of individual QTL effects (additive, dominance and imprinting) in the absence of interactions (epistasis). There are numerous reports in the literature for QTL associated with growth and body composition of pigs, however much less effort has focussed around the identification of epistatic QTL for these traits. Growth and body composition of pigs are probably influenced by numerous QTL located throughout the genome as well as interactions between QTL. Therefore the objective of this study was to investigate the contribution of epistasis to the genomic regulation of growth and body composition of pigs.