B3465 - Genetic and Environmental Components of Parental Effects on Child Physical and Mental Health - 18/02/2020
Ultimately, the similarity between parents and their children can come from two sources: nature and nurture. Recently, methods have been introduced to identify the effects of âgenetic nurtureâ - effects of the parentally-provided environment which can be explained by the parentsâ genes through their influences on parental behavior (rather than through genetic transmission to their children). We have developed an extension of these methods which may allow us to find specific genetic factors which make up this effect, for nuclear families with genotype data available on at least 2 members (e.g., sibling pairs or parent-offspring pairs). This method involves imputing missing parental genotypes from the available genotypes of each nuclear family. Because of its detailed longitudinal phenotype data and genotyped mothers and children, ALSPAC is an ideal dataset to examine these effects across a number of traits important to human health and disease. The results of this study will better help us understand the important role of the parental environment in childhood development and identify specific genetic and environmental risk factors (and their interaction) for physical and mental health outcomes in children.