Figure 1

Prioritizing QTL candidate genes via associating traits to biological processes. (A) Principle of method used: Biological processes (indicated as different colored boxes) are annotated for genes in QTL regions for a trait-of-interest. Using these gene functions, trait-biological process associations are obtained based on enrichment of biological processes among the genes linked to a particular trait, integrating information from multiple QTL regions. Genes annotated with overrepresented biological processes are prioritized. (B) Number of QTL regions connected to traits in the rice QTL compendium used for this analysis. The scale of the horizontal axis in the histogram is clipped at 50, so traits with more than 50 QTL regions associated (~2% of the total) are not included. (C) Number of genes connected to traits in the rice QTL compendium. The scale of the horizontal axis in the histogram is clipped at 5000, so traits with more than 5000 genes associated (~5% of the total) are not included.