Field Of Behavior Genetics Research Articles

An Evolutionary Perspective on Dog Behavioral Genetics.

Dogs have played an outsized role in the field of behavioral genetics since its earliest days. Their unique evolutionary history and ubiquity in the modern world make them a potentially powerful model system for discovering how genetic changes lead to changes in behavior. Genomic technology has supercharged this potential by enabling scientists to sequence the DNA of thousands of dogs and test for correlations with behavioral traits. However, fractures in the early history of animal behavior between biological and psychological subfields may be impeding progress. In addition, canine behavioral genetics has included almost exclusively dogs from modern breeds, who represent just a small fraction of all dog diversity. By expanding the scope of dog behavior studies, and incorporating an evolutionary perspective on canine behavioral genetics, we can move beyond associations to understanding the complex interactions between genes and environment that lead to dog behavior.

Behavioral genetics and genomics: Mendel’s peas, mice, and bees

The question of the heritability of behavior has been of long fascination to scientists and the broader public. It is now widely accepted that most behavioral variation has a genetic component, although the degree of genetic influence differs widely across behaviors. Starting with Mendel’s remarkable discovery of “inheritance factors,” it has become increasingly clear that specific genetic variants that influence behavior can be identified. This goal is not without its challenges: Unlike pea morphology, most natural behavioral variation has a complex genetic architecture. However, we can now apply powerful genome-wide approaches to connect variation in DNA to variation in behavior as well as analyses of behaviorally related variation in brain gene expression, which together have provided insights into both the genetic mechanisms underlying behavior and the dynamic relationship between genes and behavior, respectively, in a wide range of species and for a diversity of behaviors. Here, we focus on two systems to illustrate both of these approaches: the genetic basis of burrowing in deer mice and transcriptomic analyses of division of labor in honey bees. Finally, we discuss the troubled relationship between the field of behavioral genetics and eugenics, which reminds us that we must be cautious about how we discuss and contextualize the connections between genes and behavior, especially in humans.

Nick Martin as a Mentor — A Perspective

Nick Martin has had an outsized influence on the field of behavioral genetics. Much of this influence stems from his mentorship of young scientists. I describe Nick's mentorship, and what makes it special, from a personal perspective.

The Molecular Genetics of Life Satisfaction: Extending Findings from a Recent Genome-Wide Association Study and Examining the Role of the Serotonin Transporter

In a recent genome-wide association study (GWAS), three polymorphisms (rs3756290, RAPGEF6; rs2075677, CSE1L; rs4958581, NMUR2) were suggested as potentially being related to subjective-well-being and life satisfaction. Additionally, associations between the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism (serotonin transporter) and subjective well-being have been reported in other previous studies. In the current study, we therefore sought to further investigate the findings of the GWAS and examine the association between 5-HTTLPR and subjective well-being. A total of 1174 participants (821 females) were recruited and asked to provide information on their demographics, life satisfaction, and positive affect. All participants provided a genetic sample. We found associations between one SNP derived from the GWAS (rs4958581, NMUR2) and life satisfaction. We also replicated findings involving 5-HTTLPR and life satisfaction, but only for the housing, leisure and family life satisfaction variables, and not for overall life satisfaction or positive affect. Our study underlines that research investigating complex traits in the field of behavioral genetics is challenging due to their (a) pleiotropic and (b) polygenic effects, resulting in tiny effect sizes of each marker investigated. The current study also highlights the importance of investigating genetic markers of distinct areas of life satisfaction.

Using Cholesky Decomposition to Explore Individual Differences in Longitudinal Relations between Reading Skills

The Cholesky decomposition method is the gold standard used in the field of behavioral genetics. The method is popular because it is easy to program and solve. Using this method, researchers can explore individual differences in longitudinal relations of different variables across multiple time points. The method allows investigators to decompose variance into (1) uniquegenetic, shared and non-shared environmental effects that arise at specific time points as well as (2) overlapping genetic, shared and non-shared environmental effects that carry over from one time point to another. However, the method does not identify the mechanisms or origins underlying these effects. The current report focuses on application of the Cholesky decomposition method in the field of educational psychology. Specifically, it discusses individual differences in longitudinal relations between kindergarten letter knowledge, kindergarten phonological awareness, first grade word-level reading skills, and seventh grade reading comprehension.

Social behavior and aging: A fly model.

The field of behavioral genetics has recently begun to explore the effect of age on social behaviors. Such studies are particularly important, as certain neuropsychiatric disorders with abnormal social interactions, like autism and schizophrenia, have been linked to older parents. Appropriate social interaction can also have a positive impact on longevity, and is associated with successful aging in humans. Currently, there are few genetic models for understanding the effect of aging on social behavior and its potential transgenerational inheritance. The fly is emerging as a powerful model for identifying the basic molecular mechanisms underlying neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. In this review, we discuss these recent advancements, with a focus on how studies in Drosophila melanogaster have provided insight into the effect of aging on aspects of social behavior, including across generations.

Public Understanding of Behavioral Genetics: Integrating Heuristic Thinking, Motivated Reasoning and Planned Social Change Theories for Better Communication Strategies.

The field of behavioral genetics is experiencing a revolution following the development of genome-wide association studies and the availability of large datasets from international consortia. This rapid change could increase the existing gaps between basic research, translation, and public understanding of science. In the present work, we aim to synthesize key explanations of how public understanding of socio-scientific issues develop. We propose that integrating dual-process, motivated reasoning, and change management theories will increase the extent to which we understand, and can change, how people respond to findings from behavior genetics.

Nature vs. nurture is nonsense: On the necessity of an integrated genetic, social, developmental, and personality psychology

The field of behavioural genetics unambiguously demonstrates that heritable individual differences exist and are important in explaining human behaviour. Despite this, some psychological perspectives ignore this research. If we wish to comprehensively understand the impact of parenting, the environment, or any social factor, however, we must engage with genetics. In this article, I review research that reveals that genes affect not only our personalities, but the way that we understand and react to the social world. Studies further reveal that notable life events are in part explained by genetic variance. I detail how this could be the case through active, evocative, and passive genetic correlations, and go on to argue that all complex psychological traits are likely the result of multifaceted gene by environment interactions. A mistaken belief that genetic influence implies genetic essentialism, and is therefore tantamount to prejudice, is raised as possible reason why heritability is often ignored in the social sciences. The article concludes with practical suggestions for how we can embrace behavioural genetics as our methods struggle to match the divine complexity of human existence.

Behavioral genetics and thumb sucking in adolescents

Thumb sucking is a common habit developed by children and begins as early as in utero. However, it becomes problematic when a child continues to suck their thumb past the age of 4 years, when their secondary dentition is developing and preparing to erupt. Prolonged thumb sucking into adolescence can have deleterious effects on dental and skeletal structures based on the duration and how frequent the child engages in this nonnutritive sucking habit. Thumb sucking can lead to various types of effects such as increased overjet, anterior open bite, posterior cross bite, maxillary arch constriction, high palatal vault, and Class II malocclusion. This paper presents a case study, which focuses on chronic thumb sucking in a family, the dental and skeletal changes that the family members experienced, and whether or not this prolonged behavior can be genetically influenced. Based on this case study and the field of behavioral genetics it is possible that there can be a genetic component to the duration of thumb sucking into adolescence.

The beauty, logic and limitations of twin studies

During the last fifty years more than 2700 twin studies have been published, examining the etiology of ahigh number of traits. Twin studies enable investigation of both genetic and environmental effects, andthereby also examination of causal factors involved in human traits and disorders. The beauty of twinstudies resides in the potential of studying the unobserved by the logic of a design. The aim of this article isto outline central theoretical foundations and possible limitations, and to review selected key findings. Wedescribe the inherent fundamentals of the classic and extended twin designs. The logic of the main analyticapproaches is outlined, and the principles of univariate biometric modelling described. Next, we reviewdifferent multivariate models, including the Cholesky, correlated factors, common factor, common pathwayand phenotypic causality models. Additionally, the cotwin-control approach, representing a naturalexperimental design, and mimicking a counterfactual situation, is outlined. Central assumptions, threatsand limitations of the twin design are discussed. In particular, we address the issue of missing heritability,non-random mating, the equal environment assumption and gene-environment correlations. Finally, wereview some selected findings from the field of behavior genetics and twin studies.

Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics By Aaron Panofsky University of Chicago Press. 2014. 320 pp. $27.50 paper, $85 cloth

The field of behavior genetics has been structured from its inception by engagement with controversy. That claim, documented by a wealth of historical and institutional information on the field's development and engagement with five distinct controversies, constitutes the theoretical thread that ties together Misbehaving Science. The book traces this development and the controversies that fueled it, arguing that behavior genetics exemplifies a type of field Panofsky identifies as “misbehaving science”: a scientific field in which rules, norms, and standards are ambiguous, giving way to political and social controversies. “If science is like a machine for resolving controversies,” Panofsky writes, “in misbehaving science that machine is broken.” Behavior genetics has been wracked by controversy for obvious reasons. It was born, essentially, of the confluence between genetic science on the one hand and social and behavioral science on the other. This confluence, particularly in the context of the successes of the civil rights and women's movements, was fraught. The field's early development was essentially an attempt to avoid prior controversies (such as engagement with the by-then-disgraced field of eugenics) by establishing scientifically valid, neutral spaces for inquiry.

Genome‐wide association mapping of natural variation in odour‐guided behaviour in Drosophila

A defining goal in the field of behavioural genetics is to identify the key genes or genetic networks that shape behaviour. A corollary to this goal is the goal of identifying genetic variants that are responsible for variation in the behaviour. These goals are achieved by measuring behavioural responses to controlled stimuli, in the present case the responses of Drosophila melanogaster to olfactory stimuli. We used a high-throughput behavioural assay system to test a panel of 157 Drosophila inbred lines derived from a natural population for both temporal and spatial dynamics of odour-guided behaviour. We observed significant variation in response to the odourant 2,3-butanedione, a volatile compound present in fermenting fruit. The recent whole genome sequencing of these inbred lines allowed us to then perform genome-wide association analyses in order to identify genetic polymorphisms underlying variation in responses. These analyses revealed numerous single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with variation in responses. Among the candidate genes identified were both novel and previously identified olfaction-related genes. Further, gene network analyses suggest that genes influencing variation in odour-guided behaviour are enriched for functions involving neural processing and that these genes form a pleiotropic interaction network. We examined several of these candidate genes that were highly connected in the protein- and genetic interaction networks using RNA interference. Our results showed that subtle changes influencing nervous system function can result in marked differences in behaviour.

In Defense of Genopolitics

TheAmerican Political Science Reviewrecently published a critique of an article we published in theJournal of Politicsin 2008. In that article we showed that variants of the genes 5HTT and MAOA were significantly associated with voter turnout in a sample of 2,300 subjects from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Here, we address the critique first by conducting a replication study using an independent sample of 9,300 subjects. This study replicates the gene-environment interaction of the 5HTT gene variant with church attendance, but not the association with MAOA. We then focus on the general argument of the critique, showing that many of its characterizations of the literature in genetics and in political science are misleading or incorrect. We conclude by illustrating the ways in which genopolitics has already made a lasting contribution to the field of political science and by offering guidelines for future studies in genopolitics that are based on state-of-the-art recommendations from the field of behavior genetics.

Ethical, Legal, Social, and Policy Implications of Behavioral Genetics

The field of behavioral genetics has engendered a host of moral and social concerns virtually since its inception. The policy implications of a genetic basis for behaviors are widespread and extend beyond the clinic to the socially important realms of education, criminal justice, childbearing, and child rearing. The development of new techniques and analytic approaches, including whole-genome sequencing, noninvasive prenatal genetic testing, and optogenetics, has clearly changed the study of behavioral genetics. However, the social context of biomedical research has also changed profoundly over the past few decades, and in ways that are especially relevant to behavioral genetics. The ever-widening scope of behavioral genetics raises ethical, legal, social, and policy issues in the potential new applications to criminal justice, education, the military, and reproduction. These issues are especially critical to address because of their potentially disproportionate effects on vulnerable populations such as children, the unborn, and the incarcerated.

The hunt for gene effects pertinent to behavioral traits and psychiatric disorders: From mouse to human

The field of behavioral genetics was reviewed in the classic 1960 text by Fuller and Thompson. Since then, there has been remarkable progress in the genetic analysis of animal behavior. Many molecular genetic methods in common use today were not even anticipated in 1960. Animal models for many human psychiatric disorders have been discovered or created. In human behavior genetics, however, powerful new methods have failed to reveal even one bona fide, replicable gene effect pertinent to the normal range of variation in intelligence and personality. There is no explanatory or predictive value in that genetic information. For several psychiatric disorders, including autism and schizophrenia, many large genetic effects arise from de novo mutations. Genetically, the disorders are heterogeneous; different cases with the same diagnosis have different causes. The promises of the molecular genetic revolution have not been fulfilled in behavioral domains of most interest to human psychology.

Genetic and Environmental Influences on Media Use and Communication Behaviors

A great deal of scholarly work has explored the motivations behind media consumption and other various communication traits. However, little research has investigated the sources of these motivations and virtually no research considers their potential genetic underpinnings. Drawing on the field of behavior genetics, we use a classical twin design study to examine the genetic and environmental influences on nine communication behaviors. Our findings indicate a substantial portion of the total variance in media habits can be attributed to genes,asmuchasone-thirdofthevarianceinsomeinstances.Masscommunicationscholars would benefit by paying closer attention to heritability when thinking about the causes as well as the consequences of media traits in contemporary society.

Genetic susceptibility to lung cancer

Lung cancer is a highly environmental disease, but cancer researchers have long been interested in investigating genetic susceptibility to lung cancer. This paper is a historical review and provides updated perspectives on lung cancer susceptibility research. The recent introduction of easier genotyping methods and the availability of an almost complete human genome database facilitated the association study to thousands of cases and controls for millions of genetic markers. Discoveries in the field of behavior genetics, that is, the genetic aspects of smoking behavior and nicotine addiction, unexpectedly indicated that polymorphisms in the human central nervous system play an important role in eventually leading to lung cancer. These findings were achieved by using comprehensive approaches, such as a genome, transcriptome, or proteome approach, and the studies were often conducted without a hypothesis. Another-omics approach, the "adductome" or "exposome" approach to how life style information can be integrated into the framework of genetic association studies, has recently emerged. These new paradigms will influence the area of lung cancer risk evaluation in genome cohort studies.

Genetic analysis of sleep

Almost 20 years ago, the gene underlying fatal familial insomnia was discovered, and first suggested the concept that a single gene can regulate sleep. In the two decades since, there have been many advances in the field of behavioral genetics, but it is only in the past 10 years that the genetic analysis of sleep has emerged as an important discipline. Major findings include the discovery of a single gene underlying the sleep disorder narcolepsy, and identification of loci that make quantitative contributions to sleep characteristics. The sleep field has also expanded its focus from mammalian model organisms to Drosophila, zebrafish, and worms, which is allowing the application of novel genetic approaches. Researchers have undertaken large-scale screens to identify new genes that regulate sleep, and are also probing questions of sleep circuitry and sleep function on a molecular level. As genetic tools continue to be refined in each model organism, the genes that support a specific function in sleep will become more apparent. Thus, while our understanding of sleep still remains rudimentary, rapid progress is expected from these recently initiated studies.

The Early Growth and Development Study: Using the Prospective Adoption Design to Examine Genotype–Environment Interplay

The Early Growth and Development Study (EGDS) is a prospective adoption design consisting of 360 linked sets of birth parents, adoptive parents, and adopted children followed from 3 months postpartum through child age 7 years and an additional 200 linked sets for whom recruitment is underway. The EGDS brings together the study of genotype–environment correlation and Genotype × Environment (G × E) interaction to inform intervention development by examining mechanisms whereby family processes mediate or moderate the expression of genetic influences. Participants in the EGDS are recruited through domestic adoption agencies located throughout the United States of America. The assessments occur at 6-month intervals until child age 4-½ years and at ages 6 and 7, when the children are in their 1st and 2nd years of formal schooling (kindergarten and first grade). The data collection includes measures of child characteristics, birth and adoptive parent characteristics, adoptive parenting, prenatal exposure to drugs and maternal stress, birth parent and adopted child salivary cortisol reactivity, and DNA from all participants. The preliminary analyses suggest evidence for GxE interaction beginning in infancy. An intervention perspective on future developments in the field of behavioral genetics is described.

Introduction to the Special Issue, Pathways Between Genes, Brain, and Behavior

In the past 10 years or so, with the sequencing of the human genome and rapid advances in the development of high throughput techniques, the field of behavior genetics has increasingly moved toward the detection of actual genes and environmental factors. However, the field is still in the relatively early stages of understanding some of the basic facts about the complex genetic underpinnings of brain structure and function and their relationship to behavior. The 15 articles in this special issue were selected to represent the diversity of methodologies applied to the complexity of pathways linking genes, brain, and behavior. While providing strong evidence for the role of genes in individual differences in brain structure and function, these papers also demonstrate that environmental experiences alter neurobiological pathways, and that genetic factors may further moderate the impact of environmental experience. Most importantly, the breadth of studies proves that in order to be able to trace the pathways between genes, brain, and behavior, we need experts in genetics, neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry.