This is only the first pass on what promises to be a very rich source of new genetic insights, said co-author David Schlessinger of the National Institutes on Aging in Baltimore. "We're expecting an avalanche of data in the next few months."
Although the statistical analysis showed that there is a clear genetic component for each of the 98 traits examined and that some genetic factors influence many traits at once, no connection was established linking personality and cardiovascular function. "We didn't see it," Schlessinger said. "Maybe it's there, but we didn't see it."
Height was found to be 80 percent genetic, cholesterol about 40 percent, and behavior traits 10 to 20 percent, Abecasis said.
Earlier studies had assigned higher percentages for the genetics of behavior, but Abecasis thinks that happened because of statistical biases created by the twin studies that have traditionally provided this kind of data. "To avoid such problems, this analysis of more than 34,000 relative pairs focused on more distantly related individuals," Abecasis.
For most traits, genes have relatively more influence when a person is younger, but some traits, especially high or low blood pressure, were found to be more strongly influenced by genes as a person aged. Schlessinger says this is because some traits would have cumulative effects that only show themselves with a longer lifespan. For example, genes that result in a poor ability to scour deposits from arteries could eventually lead to elevated blood pressure, but only after the deposits had accumulated over time.
Having established some of the genetic correlations, the next step is to find the specific molecular differences that account for variation, Abecasis said. "The most exciting part comes next. And we now have a better idea of who to study for what condition." In order to accomplish this next step, 10,000 genetic markers have been characterized for each partic
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Contact: Karl Leif Bates
batesk@umich.edu
734-647-1842
University of Michigan
28-Aug-2006