Bence, Melinda

Elek, Zs.

Kis, Anna

Kubinyi, Enikő

Lakatos, Gabriella

Miklósi, Ádám

Pergel, Éva

Rónai, Zsolt

Repository of the Academy's Library

studies that have linked EFs to particular genetic variants. We pro-pose to test whether a genetic risk score for BD will predict EFs in asample of approximately 700 individuals from the Colorado Com-munity Twin Sample (CTS) and Longitudinal Twin Sample (LTS).The risk score will be a count of the number of alleles that confer riskon a standardized composite BD score in an independent discoverysample of approximately 1,050 participants (based on SNPSp\ 0.001). Markers in the same region tend to be highly correlateddue to Linkage Disequalibrium (LD), therefore all redundant SNPswith an r2[ 0.2 will be removed from the risk score. This shouldleave us with a risk score of 700 SNPs or less out of the 700,000genotyped. There will also be a proof of concept analysis where wetake this risk score and use it to predict functional brain activation in30 of the individuals from the CTS (selected to be extreme on aCommon EF factor) who performed three EF tasks in a magneticresonance imaging (MRI) scanner. We predict that the risk score willcorrelate negatively with a Common EF factor, but not with two otherEF components speciﬁc to working memory updating and taskswitching.Analysis of oxytocin receptor gene as putativecomponent of social behavior in family dogsMelinda Bence, MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group;Zsuzsanna Elek, Semmelweis University, Budapest; Anna Kis,Eo¨tvo¨s University, Budapest; Enik}o Kubinyi, MTA-ELTEComparative Ethology Research Group, Budapest; Gabriella Lakatos,MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group, Budapest;A´da´m Miklo´si, MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group,Budapest; Enik}o Pergel, Semmelweis University, Budapest;Zsolt Ro´nai, Semmelweis University, BudapestBackground: The oxytocin system is considered to have a key func-tion in the regulation of social behavior, and probably mediate thepsychosocial effects of human-animal interactions as well. The aim ofthe present study was to investigate whether the genetic variations ofoxytocin receptor gene are associated with dogs’ socio-cognitiveskills.Methods: Polymorphic variants were identiﬁed by direct sequencingof protein coding segment and the ﬂanking regulatory un-translatedregions of oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene. This pilot experiment wasperformed on 3–3 individuals of 6 different dog breeds and wolves.The identiﬁed polymorphisms were genotyped by PCR based tech-niques. For the characterizing the behavioral phenotype we haveconstructed a test series containing ﬁve different sub-tests (greetingby a stranger, separation from the owner, problem solving, threaten-ing approach, hiding), which revealed dogs’ socio-cognitive skillswhen interacting with humans. The genotype–phenotype associationwas assessed statistically by ANOVA.Results: Alignment of the obtained sequence segments of the OXTRgene revealed ﬁve novel (-212AG, -93TC, -73CG, -49CG,19131AG) and three known (rs22927829, rs8679682, rs8679684)single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP). The identiﬁed polymor-phisms were subsequently genotyped in larger populations involving71 German Shepherds, 104 border collies, 64 retrievers, 29 beaglesand 44 wolves. The results conﬁrmed that the identiﬁed SNPs arepolymorphic not only in the dog breeds, but also in wolves, howeverallele frequencies differed among the investigated breeds as well asbetween dogs and wolves. Furthermore our preliminary results sug-gest that oxytocin receptor gene polymorphisms have an impact ondogs’ socio-cognitive skills.Conclusions: Our results indicate that the oxytocin receptor gene ispolymorphic among the different dog breeds and may contribute tothe genetic background of socio-cognitive behavior in dogs. Thedifferences of these genetic variations between dog and wolf popu-lations might be related to domestication process of dogs.Applying visual recognition software to yearbookphotographs to assign zygosity of twin pairs in projectTALENTCarol Prescott, University of Southern California; Xiaokun Xu,University of Southern California; Deanna Lyter, American Institutesfor Research; Susan Lapham, American Institutes for Research;Lindsey Mitchell, American Institutes for Research; Ashley Kaiser,American Institutes for Research; Irving Biederman, Universityof Southern CaliforniaProject TALENT is a US population representative study of morethan 370,000 high school students ﬁrst assessed in 1960. The sampleincludes[88,000 in sibships, including[4,500 twins. In 2011 webegan obtaining yearbook photos of same-sex twin pairs to use forzygosity ratings. So far, photos have been obtained for 491 same-sexpairs (30.9 % of total). Digitally scanned images are put into gray-scale, cropped to remove non-face features (mainly hair), thentranslated and rotated in plane such that the vertical meridian of theface is vertically aligned. Images are resized into 256 9 256 pixelswith equalization of the mean luminance and Root Mean Square(RMS) contrast among all images. Each image is parceled into a10 9 10 lattice and passed through 40 Gabor ﬁlters (tuned to 5 scalesand 8 orientations), producing a 4000-element coefﬁcient vector.Similarity is calculated (within sex and race) as a Pearson’s correla-tion between the corresponding vectors of two images. Within-pairresemblances are compared to similarity with all other photos basedon a z-transformation of the r values. Preliminary results show strongcorrelations for twins in a pair. The algorithm is being evaluated foruse in zygosity assignment with samples of adolescent twin pairswhose zygosity was determined by blood typing or genotyping.Smoking and long-term labor market outcomesPetri Bo¨ckerman, Labour Institute for Economic Research;Ari Hyytinen, University of Jyva¨skyla¨; Jaakko Kaprio, Universityof HelsinkiSmokers earn less than never smokers, but the estimates of the wagegap vary from 1 to 24 % in different studies. Most of the earlierstudies have used cross-sectional information on annual earnings, notlong-term income and earnings. The association of smoking withearnings may be attributed to confounding factors, such as familialfactors. This paper uses twin data matched to register-based indi-vidual information to examine the long-term effects of smoking onlabor market outcomes. Using the responses from the 1975, 1981 and1990 questionnaires of the older Finnish Cohort, we linked annualtaxable income/earnings and employment information from the ofﬁ-cial records of Statistics Finland for the 15-year period of 1990–2004.The analysis was restricted to working-age men born 1945–1957 andaged 33–45 in 1990 and 47–59 in 2004 (N = 3,914 MZ and DZindividuals and 1,957 pairs), thus capturing their peak income/earn-ings period. Our preferred within-twin pair models control both forthe shared environmental and genetic factors. The results show thatsmokers have lower long-term income and earnings, if the sharedenvironmental and genetic factors are not accounted for (averageannual income for never smokers of 26,870 euros and 23,000 eurosfor current smokers in 1981). Those 1975 smokers who quit by 1981earned more in 1990–2004 than those who smoked also in 1981. InBehav Genet (2013) 43:505–550 509123

Analysis of oxytocin receptor gene as putative component of social behavior in family dogs

Analysis of oxytocin receptor gene as putative component of social behavior in family dogs

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Repository of the Academy's Library