Lab Meeting Tuesday April 23: Human personality and genetics

In keeping with the human theme from this week, I suggest we read Verweij et al.'s recent Evolution paper on the genetics of human personality for lab meeting next week. The title/abstract and link to the article can be found below. In their article, they have chosen to use Cloninger's 4 dimensions of temperament as their personality measure.

Here is a wikipedia article with a bit of background about this measure of personality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Robert_Cloninger, including some of the controversies surrounding these particular indices. Temperament is determined via a 240-question questionnaire, as described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperament_and_Character_Inventory.

And for those of you interested in finding out your own temperament dimensions, you can take the Temperament and Character Inventory for free at this website: http://www.anthropediafoundation.org/site/PageServer?pagename=wwd_TCI. It would be interesting to discuss some of our own results, for anyone who has the time to take it!

In addition to the article discussion, Anna Norden will start the lab meeting by giving us a presentation of her Master's work on assortative mating in Calopteryx (demoiselle) damselflies.

I will provide fika! See you there...


MAINTENANCE OF GENETIC VARIATION IN HUMAN PERSONALITY: TESTING EVOLUTIONARY MODELS BY ESTIMATING HERITABILITY DUE TO COMMON CAUSAL VARIANTS AND INVESTIGATING THE EFFECT OF DISTANT INBREEDING

1. Karin J.H. Verweij^1,2,3, 
2. Jian Yang¹, 
3. Jari Lahti⁴, 
4. Juha Veijola⁵, 
5. Mirka Hintsanen⁶,
6. Laura Pulkki-Råback⁶, 
7. Kati Heinonen⁴,
8. Anneli Pouta⁷, 
9. Anu-Katriina Pesonen⁴,
10. Elisabeth Widen⁸, 
11. Anja Taanila⁹, 
12. Matti Isohanni⁴, 
13. Jouko Miettunen⁵, 
14. Aarno Palotie^8,10,11, 
15. Lars Penke¹², 
16. Susan K. Service¹³, 
17. Andrew C. Heath¹⁴, 
18. Grant W. Montgomery¹, 
19. Olli Raitakari¹⁵, 
20. Mika Kähönen¹⁶, 
21. Jorma Viikari¹⁷, 
22. Katri Räikkönen⁴, 
23. Johan G Eriksson^{7,18,19,20,21}, 
24. Liisa Keltikangas-Järvinen⁶, 
25. Terho Lehtimäki²², 
26. Nicholas G. Martin¹, 
27. Marjo-Riitta Järvelin^9,23,24,25, 
28. Peter M. Visscher¹,
29. Matthew C. Keller^26,27, 
30. Brendan P. Zietsch^1,2,3,28

Personality traits are basic dimensions of behavioral variation, and twin, family, and adoption studies show that around 30% of the between-individual variation is due to genetic variation. There is rapidly growing interest in understanding the evolutionary basis of this genetic variation. Several evolutionary mechanisms could explain how genetic variation is maintained in traits, and each of these makes predictions in terms of the relative contribution of rare and common genetic variants to personality variation, the magnitude of nonadditive genetic influences, and whether personality is affected by inbreeding. Using genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data from > 8000 individuals, we estimated that little variation in the Cloninger personality dimensions (7.2% on average) is due to the combined effect of common, additive genetic variants across the genome, suggesting that most heritable variation in personality is due to rare variant effects and/or a combination of dominance and epistasis. Furthermore, higher levels of inbreeding were associated with less socially desirable personality trait levels in three of the four personality dimensions. These findings are consistent with genetic variation in personality traits having been maintained by mutation–selection balance.