ESHG 2014: Multiple genes of small effect and their interactions with environmental factors explain variation in personality traits

Title: J14.29 - Multiple genes of small effect and their interactions with environmental factors explain variation in personality traits Keywords: personality traits; brain derived neurotrophic factor; GxE model Authors: A. Kazantseva1, Y. Kutlumbetova2, S. Malykh3, R. Kanzafarova2, T. Traks4, S. Koks5, M. Lobaskova6, E. Khusnutdinova1,2; 1Institute of Biochemistry and Genetics Ufa Scientific Center of Russian Academy of Sciencies, Ufa, Russian Federation, 2Bashkir State University, Ufa, Russian Federation, 3Psychological Institute, Russian Academy of Education, Moscow, Russian Federation, 4Department of Physiology, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia, 5Department of Pathophysiology, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia, 6Udmurt State University, Izhevsk, Russian Federation.

Abstract: Personality traits are thought to be endophenotypes (high Harm Avoidance (HA), low Self-directedness (SD)) for most psychiatric disorders and predictors of life outcomes. Genetic influences on personality traits are attributable to many genes of small effect and are modulated by environmental factors. We aimed to examine gene-environment (GxE) and gene-gene (GxG) interaction models based on neurotrophic factor (NGF, BDNF, NTRK2, NTRK3), serotoninergic (SLC6A4, TPH1) and dopaminergic system (DRD2, SLC6A3) gene polymorphisms contributing into personality traits variation in healthy individuals.

In total, 1018 healthy individuals (68% women) from Russia (mean age±SD: 19.81±2.65 years) without any history of psychopathologies were subjected to personality traits assessment via TCI-125 (Cloninger et al., 1993). Involved individuals are Caucasians from Russian (N=409), Tatar (N=290), Bashkir (N=130) and Udmurt populations (N=189). Socio-demographic data including gender, ethnicity, order and season of birth (SOB), place of residence, level of income, childhood maltreatment were obtained. Genotyping of 70 SNPs was performed with SNPlexTM platform (Applied Biosystems). Statistical analysis was conducted with PLINK v.1.07 corrected via FDR-procedure for multiple comparisons.

The present study revealed GxE models demonstrated BDNF Val66Met*SOB (PFDR=0.036), BDNF rs1519479*ethnicity (PFDR=0.042) and 5-HTTLPR*SOB (PFDR=0.05) interactions affected HA. Moreover, variations in SD were caused by interactions between BDNF Val66Met (PFDR=0.048), BDNF rs2030323 (PFDR=0.035) and ethnicity. Accordingly, genetic testing for BDNF and 5-HTT gene polymorphisms assuming gender, ethnicity and SOB confounding is necessary for psychopathologies prevention at early stages. This work was supported by Russian foundation for humanities grant 13-06-00583a.