# Non-Additive Effects, cis-QTLs, and trans-QTLs

**URL:** <https://isgw-forum.colorado.edu/t/non-additive-effects-cis-qtls-and-trans-qtls/915>\
**Category:** Day 8\
**Created:** [June 11, 2026, 10:49pm UTC](https://isgw-forum.colorado.edu/t/non-additive-effects-cis-qtls-and-trans-qtls/915 "2026-06-11T22:49:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![anonymous](https://isgw-forum.colorado.edu/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/8491ac/32.png) [@anonymous](https://isgw-forum.colorado.edu/u/anonymous)\
**Post date:** [June 11, 2026, 10:49pm UTC](https://isgw-forum.colorado.edu/t/non-additive-effects-cis-qtls-and-trans-qtls/915/1 "2026-06-11T22:49:38Z")

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I was wondering if you could go over how we define the types of effects we expect. More concretely (And I don’t have a good biological rationale for this) would we expect different types of effect - i.e. trans QTL having more non-linear effects than cis-QTL?

> Replying to “I was wondering if you could go over how we define…”:

In general most of these effects are small so linear models behave reasonably well - attempts to find non-additive genetic effects for complex traits haven’t really identified a bunch of loci - here’s a look at non-additive effects across UK Biobank: [Analysis of genetic dominance in the UK Biobank - PubMed](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36996212/) - this all may be downstream of power issues [as power increases we would have a better ability to identify non-additive effects

> Replying to “I was wondering if you could go over how we define…”:

Thank you! I’ll check it out!