Expression biomarkers used for the selective breeding of complex polygenic 1 traits 2 3 4 M. Marta Guarna #,1,2+ , Shelley E. Hoover #,1,2, 3+ , Elizabeth Huxter 4 , Heather Higo 1 , Kyung- 5 Mee Moon 1 , Dominik Domanski 5 , Miriam E.F. Bixby 1 , Andony P. Melathopoulos 2,3,6+ , 6 Abdullah Ibrahim 2 , Michael Peirson 2 , Suresh Desai 7 , Derek Micholson 7 , Rick White 8 , 7 Christoph H. Borchers 5 , Robert W. Currie 7 , Stephen F. Pernal 2 *, Leonard J. Foster 1 * 8 9 1 Centre for High-Throughput Biology, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, 10 and Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 11 BC, Canada, 12 2 Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada, Beaverlodge Research Farm, Beaverlodge AB, 13 Canada 14 3 Alberta Agriculture and Forestry, Lethbridge, AB, Canada 15 4 Kettle Valley Queens, Grand Forks, BC, Canada 16 5 Genome BC Proteomics Centre, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada 17 6 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Calgary, AB, Canada 18 7 Department of Entomology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada 19 8 Department of Statistics, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada 20 21 # These authors contributed equally to this work 22 + Current affiliation 23 *Address correspondence to: 24 LJF - foster@chibi.ubc.ca 25 SFP - Steve.Pernal@agr.gc.ca 26 . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license not certified by peer review) is the author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was this version posted September 19, 2016. . https://doi.org/10.1101/076174 doi: bioRxiv preprint