The exact test for cytonuclear disequilibria

Abstract

We extend the analysis of the statistical properties of cytonuclear disequilibria in two major ways. First, we develop the asymptotic sampling theory for the nonrandom associations between the alleles at a haploid cytoplasmic locus and the alleles and genotypes at a diploid nuclear locus, when there are an arbitrary number of alleles at each marker. This includes the derivation of the maximum likelihood estimators and their sampling variances for each disequilibrium measure, together with simple tests of the null hypothesis of no disequilibrium. In addition to these new asymptotic tests, we provide the first implementation of Fisher's exact test for the genotypic cytonuclear disequilibria and some approximations of the exact test. We also outline an exact test for allelic cytonuclear disequilibria in multiallelic systems. An exact test should be used for data sets when either the marginal frequencies are extreme or the sample size is small. The utility of this new sampling theory is illustrated through applications to recent nuclear-mtDNA and nuclear-cpDNA data sets. The results also apply to population surveys of nuclear loci in conjunction with markers in cytoplasmically inherited microorganisms.