Maternal Smoking during Pregnancy Interacts with Genetic Factors to Increase Risk for Low Birth Weight but not Harmful Offspring Smoking Behaviors in Europeans.

Introduction: Pregnant individuals who smoke face increased health risks because smoking harms both the mother and their developing offspring.

Methods: Using 307 417 Europeans from the UK Biobank, we examined whether exposure to maternal smoking during pregnancy (MSP) interacts with genetic risk to predict offspring birth weight (BW) and smoking behaviors. We investigated interactions between MSP and genetic risk at multiple levels: single variant, gene-level, and polygenic score.

Loci on chromosome 20 interact with rs16969968 to influence cigarettes per day in European ancestry individuals.

Background: The understanding of the molecular genetic contributions to smoking is largely limited to the additive effects of individual single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), but the underlying genetic risk is likely to also include dominance, epistatic, and gene-environment interactions.

Methods: To begin to address this complexity, we attempted to identify genetic interactions between rs16969968, the most replicated SNP associated with smoking quantity, and all SNPs and genes across the genome.

Results: Using the UK Biobank European subsample, we found one SNP, rs1892967, and two genes, PCNA and TMEM230, that showed a significant genome-wide interaction with rs16969968 for log10 CPD and raw CPD, respectively, in a sample of 116 442 individuals who self-reported currently or previously smoking.

Reinvigoration of a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics: Student-driven Progress.

Extremist far-right ideologies, including scientifically inaccurate beliefs about race, are on the rise (Mieriņa and Koroļeva 2015; Youngblood 2020); individuals perpetuating such ideologies occasionally cite genetics research, including behavioral genetics research. This highlights the need for behavioral geneticists to actively confront extremist ideology and promote anti-racism. We emphasize the need for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) committees within behavioral genetics institutions.

Polygenic influences on the behavioral effects of alcohol withdrawal in a mixed-ancestry population from the collaborative study on the genetics of alcoholism (COGA).

Alcohol withdrawal (AW) is a feature of alcohol use disorder that may occur in up to half of individuals with chronic, heavy alcohol consumption whenever alcohol use is abruptly stopped or significantly reduced. To date, few genes have been robustly associated with AW; this may be partly due to most studies defining AW as a binary construct despite the multiple symptoms and their range in severity from mild to severe. The current study examined the effects of genome-wide loci on a factor score for AW in high risk and community family samples in the Collaborative Study for the Genetics of Alcoholism (COGA).

Little Evidence of Modified Genetic Effect of rs16969968 on Heavy Smoking Based on Age of Onset of Smoking.

Introduction: Tobacco smoking is the leading cause of preventable death globally. Smoking quantity, measured in cigarettes per day, is influenced both by the age of onset of regular smoking (AOS) and by genetic factors, including a strong effect of the nonsynonymous single-nucleotide polymorphism rs16969968. A previous study by Hartz et al.