The body mass index (BMI) has long been used in population studies in order to quantify obesity
and is known to predict cardiovascular events. Especially in childhood BMI the influence of family environment has attracted considerable interest. Thus previous research has shown that maternal BMI is an excellent predictor for the BMI of the offspring. However, it is unclear to what extent maternal genetic factors contribute to the offspring’s BMI beyond genetic transmission. This effect is also called cultural transmission (CT) and can be defined as the transmission of environmental factors from the parent to the offspring generation. CT can be divided into two components. Environmental influence caused by parental genetic factors
and components transmitted exclusively via the environment. Thus the aim of this proposal is to
partition CT into genetic and environmental aspects to further elucidate the maternal influence
on BMI.