Commentary: Fundamental problems with candidate gene-by-environment interaction studies - reflections on Moore and Thoemmes (2016).

Abstract

Moore and Thoemmes elaborate on one particular source of difficulty in the study of candidate gene-by-environment interactions (cG×E): how different biologically plausible configurations of gene-environment covariation can bias estimates of cG×E when not explicitly modeled. However, even if cG×E investigators were able to account for the sources of bias Moore and Thoemmes elaborate, it is unlikely that conventional approaches would yield reliable results. Published cG×E findings to date have generally employed inadequate analytic procedures, have relied on samples orders of magnitude too small to detect plausible effects, and have relied on a particular candidate gene approach that has been unfruitful and largely jettisoned in mainstream genetic analyses of complex traits. Analytic procedures for the study of gene-environment interplay must evolve to meet the challenges that the genetic architecture of complex traits presents, and investigators must collaborate on grander scales if we hope to begin to understand how specific genes and environments combine to affect behavior.