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Comparison of adopted and non-adopted individuals reveals gene-environment interplay for education in the UK Biobank

View ORCID ProfileRosa Cheesman, Avina Hunjan, View ORCID ProfileJonathan R. I. Coleman, View ORCID ProfileYasmin Ahmadzadeh, View ORCID ProfileRobert Plomin, View ORCID ProfileTom A. McAdams, View ORCID ProfileThalia C. Eley, View ORCID ProfileGerome Breen
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/707695
Rosa Cheesman
Social Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, UK
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  • ORCID record for Rosa Cheesman
Avina Hunjan
Social Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, UK
NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health; South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, UK
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Jonathan R. I. Coleman
Social Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, UK
NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health; South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, UK
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Yasmin Ahmadzadeh
Social Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, UK
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Robert Plomin
Social Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, UK
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Tom A. McAdams
Social Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, UK
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Thalia C. Eley
Social Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, UK
NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health; South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, UK
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  • For correspondence: gerome.breen@kcl.ac.uk thalia.eley@kcl.ac.uk
Gerome Breen
Social Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, UK
NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health; South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, UK
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  • For correspondence: gerome.breen@kcl.ac.uk thalia.eley@kcl.ac.uk
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Abstract

Individual-level polygenic scores can now explain ∼10% of the variation in number of years of completed education. However, associations between polygenic scores and education capture not only genetic propensity but information about the environment that individuals are exposed to. This is because individuals passively inherit effects of parental genotypes, since their parents typically also provide the rearing environment. In other words, the strong correlation between offspring and parent genotypes results in an association between the offspring genotypes and the rearing environment. This is termed passive gene-environment correlation. We present an approach to test for the extent of passive gene-environment correlation for education without requiring intergenerational data. Specifically, we use information from 6311 individuals in the UK Biobank who were adopted in childhood to compare genetic influence on education between adoptees and non-adopted individuals. Adoptees’ rearing environments are less correlated with their genotypes, because they do not share genes with their adoptive parents. We find that polygenic scores are twice as predictive of years of education in non-adopted individuals compared to adoptees (R2= 0.074 vs 0.037, difference test p= 8.23 × 10−24). We provide another kind of evidence for the influence of parental behaviour on offspring education: individuals in the lowest decile of education polygenic score attain significantly more education if they are adopted, possibly due to educationally supportive adoptive environments. Overall, these results suggest that genetic influences on education are mediated via the home environment. As such, polygenic prediction of educational attainment represents gene-environment correlations just as much as it represents direct genetic effects.

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Posted July 18, 2019.
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Comparison of adopted and non-adopted individuals reveals gene-environment interplay for education in the UK Biobank
Rosa Cheesman, Avina Hunjan, Jonathan R. I. Coleman, Yasmin Ahmadzadeh, Robert Plomin, Tom A. McAdams, Thalia C. Eley, Gerome Breen
bioRxiv 707695; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/707695
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Comparison of adopted and non-adopted individuals reveals gene-environment interplay for education in the UK Biobank
Rosa Cheesman, Avina Hunjan, Jonathan R. I. Coleman, Yasmin Ahmadzadeh, Robert Plomin, Tom A. McAdams, Thalia C. Eley, Gerome Breen
bioRxiv 707695; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/707695

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