Molecular and quantitative genetic basis and control of severe combined immunodeficiency and porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome in pigs

Abstract

First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge the love, support, and guidance of my family; without you all, I would have never made it to where I am today. Mama, you are my confidant, therapist, and most importantly, my mama. I will forever be grateful for everything that you have done for me since the day I was born. Your selflessness is endless. Dad, thank you for your guidance, advice, and help through the years. John and Ben, thank you both for always putting a smile on my face, even when times are tough. Your confidence in me is something that holds a very special place in my heart. To my sweet sister, Nancy, even though you are no longer here, the love that we shared is constantly with me. My memories of you have gotten me through the worst struggles, and I hope that you are proud of the woman I have become since we last saw one another. I would like to thank my advisors and their wives. Dr. Jack Dekkers, I will never forget our first meeting for breakfast when I came to interview. You were so wise, so accepting, so honest. I'm very glad that you didn't tell me how cold it would be in January when I moved to Iowa (it was much warmer when I interviewed in June). Your unwavering calm demeanor has taught me so much in the years since our first meeting. You are such an admirable man. Thank you for your academic advising, as well as personal. Mrs. Sue Dekkers, I'm not going to go too much into our first meeting, road-tripping to Chicago and refusing to touch Jack's new iPhone after Nick Boddicker nicked it up. But, I will say that your bright personality has brought many smiles to my face! You are a wonderful GradMa to all of us. I've enjoyed our times spent together. Dr. Chris Tuggle, I tear up just trying to think of what to say to thank you for everything. I hope that one day, I will have half of the finesse that you exhibit daily. You are such a deep scientific thinker, yet you never fail to notice the most subtle emotional change. I am xi eternally grateful for the time I've spent in your office, and I believe I may still have a box of your facial tissues at my desk. Thank you for picking me up when I was down and for your confidence in me. Mrs. Maureen Tuggle, you are such a kind spirit, always thoughtful and willing to lend a helping hand no matter the circumstances. Your kindness towards me has taught me the importance of grace and love. I have such great admiration and respect for all of you. And to all four of you, I would get in the hot tub with you now. I would also like to show my appreciation for my committee members for their assistance and guidance through my graduate studies. Dr. Joan Cunnick, thank you for all of your help with the endless immunology questions that have come along with the SCID project. Dr. Peng Liu, thank you for sharing your knowledge of statistics with me. You are such a wonderful teacher. Dr. Dorian Garrick, I am very grateful for all of our interactions. You have taught me so much about the animal breeding industry, and I know that will serve me well throughout my caree...

Host genetics of response to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome in nursery pigs

“…Because the PRRSV strains that pigs encounter in the field will be different from the strains used in the PHGC trials, we focused on across-strain genomic prediction of host response by training on PHGC trials that used one strain (NVSL or KS06) and validated on PHGC trials that used the other strain. The resulting accuracy of genomic prediction of VL was 0.45 when training on the KS06 data and validating on the NVLS data and 0.34 when training on the NVSL data and validating on the KS06 data (Waide, 2015). For comparison, the accuracy of predicting an animal's genetic value for a trait based on the animal's own phenotype is the square root of heritability (Falconer and MacKay, 1996), which amounts to 0.56 for NVSL and 0.71 for KS06.…”