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Contribution Details

Type Working Paper
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Genome-wide association analyses of risk tolerance and risky behaviors in over 1 million individuals identify hundreds of loci and shared genetic influences
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Richard Karlsson Linnér
  • Pietro Biroli
  • Ernst Fehr
  • Christian L Zünd
  • et al
Language
  • English
Institution Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Series Name BioRxiv
Number 261081
Number of Pages 23
Date 2019
Abstract Text Humans vary substantially in their willingness to take risks. In a combined sample of over one million individuals, we conducted genome-wide association studies (GWAS) of general risk tolerance, adventurousness, and risky behaviors in the driving, drinking, smoking, and sexual domains. We identified 611 approximately independent genetic loci associated with at least one of our phenotypes, including 124 with general risk tolerance. We report evidence of substantial shared genetic influences across general risk tolerance and risky behaviors: 72 of the 124 general risk tolerance loci contain a lead SNP for at least one of our other GWAS, and general risk tolerance is moderately to strongly genetically correlated (|rˆg| ~ 0.25 to 0.50) with a range of risky behaviors. Bioinformatics analyses imply that genes near general-risk-tolerance-associated SNPs are highly expressed in brain tissues and point to a role for glutamatergic and GABAergic neurotransmission. We find no evidence of enrichment for genes previously hypothesized to relate to risk tolerance.
Official URL https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/01/08/261081
Digital Object Identifier 10.1101/261081
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