University of Missouri

Academic Institute

Wendy SlutskeKellyn SpychalaIan Gizer

B3823

The relationship between alcohol use and aggression and its public health consequences have long been established with some suggestions that executive functioning and attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder may play a role in this relationship. While it is generally accepted that these traits are similarly influenced by genetics, less is known about the specific genetic factors they share in common, and how this genetic overlap may change over time. The proposed project aims to use advanced genetic tools to identify biological contributions to the genetic overlap between alcohol use, aggression, ADHD, and executive function, to examine changes in their shared genetic influences across adolescence and young adulthood.

The contributions of the current proposal include utilization of individual level whole-genome data to examine whether genetic covariation among aggression, alcohol use, executive function, and ADHD changes as a function of age. While the literature has examined changes in heritability of these phenotypes across age, to date the literature has yet to examine whether the genetic covariation between these traits changes across time. The goal of the current project is to begin to address this question. Further, these types of analyses are novel to the literature and could elucidate our understanding of the changes in shared genetic influences between traits providing direction for future mediational analyses when appropriate modeling tools become available.

02/07/2021