Table 1. Parentage SNP selection criteria for use in globally diverse breeds of sheep.

Criteria	Benefits
Concurrent membership on OvineSNP50 Bead Array (autosomes)	Increased standardization
Highly informativea in at least 36 ISGC breed groups and a U.S. sheep panelb	Increased PE and PI
Concurrent membership in any of four parentage SNP setsb	Increased standardization
Only two nucleotide alleles observed	Improved assay design
Not part of an insertion or deletion polymorphism	Increased testing accuracy
Absence of large blocks of repetitive DNA nearby	Increased quality controlc
Unique map location	Increased testing accuracy
Even distribution of parentage SNPs (approximately 15 Mb)	Reduced allelic association
Nearby polymorphisms identified in 166 sheep and 50 breedsd	Increased testing accuracy
Parentage SNP region correctly amplified by PCR in a U.S. sheep panel and verified by Sanger sequencing	Increased testing quality control
Consistent Mendelian inheritance patterns in 95 tetrad familiese	Increased test validation

^aMAF greater than or equal to 0.3 in the specified group.

^bSee Materials and Methods for description of sets.

^cLarge blocks of repeats (>1 kb) in nearby sequence precludes the production of unique 750 bp PCR fragments for Sanger sequencing, and thus hinders independent validation of genotypes.

^dNearby SNPs and indels identified within approximately 350 bp of the parentage SNP.

^eDescribed in Materials and Methods.