Accurate Genomic Predictions for Chronic Wasting Disease in U.S. White-Tailed Deer

The geographic expansion of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in U.S. white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) has been largely unabated by best management practices, diagnostic surveillance, and depopulation of positive herds. Using a custom Affymetrix Axiom® single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) array, we demonstrate that both differential susceptibility to CWD, and natural variation in disease progression, are moderately to highly heritable (h2 = 0.337 ± 0.079-0.637 ± 0.070) among farmed U.S. white-tailed deer, and that loci other than PRNP are involved. Genome-wide association analyses using 123,987 quality filtered SNPs for a geographically diverse cohort of 807 farmed U.S. white-tailed deer (n = 284 CWD positive; n = 523 CWD non-detect) confirmed the prion gene (PRNP; G96S) as a large-effect risk locus (P-value