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Individual Variance in Human Aggression: A Combined Effect of Polygenic Score and Social/Lifestyle Factors

  • HUMAN GENETICS
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Abstract

To date, the assessment of a simultaneous effect of SNPs on manifesting aggression via polygenic score (PGS) approach has been performed mainly in Western Europeans and is scarce in Russians. In turn, genes belonging to monoaminergic systems, inflammatory response, hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, telomerase activity, and miRNA regulation have been previously associated with aggressive behavior or affective pathology. Therefore, we aimed to estimate a combined effect of PGS based on 30 SNPs belonging to abovementioned systems and social/lifestyle factors on individual differences in BPAQ-measured aggression in young adults from the Volga-Ural region (VUR) of Russia. Initially, a series of multiple linear regression was carried out in the testing sample (N = 500) from VUR with PGS calculated on a basis of effect estimates obtained from the training sample (N = 565) from VUR and controlling for sex, ethnicity, and age. The final model was based on a combined effect of PGS of TERT, TNF, SLC6A4, smoking and maternal protection (p = 8.41 × 10–10), which explained up to 11.51% of variance in physical aggression. Subsequently, we calculated PGS in the total sample from VUR (N = 1065) based on summary statistics from risky behavior GWAS conducted in UK Biobank (Mbatchou et al., 2021). The best model explaining up to 4.6% of variance in verbal aggression comprised of PGS, sibship size, and childhood adversity (p = 1.71 × 10–6). Revealed findings evidence in a better prognostic ability of models comprising PGS based on summary statistics from ethnically same cohort and the same phenotype.

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Funding

The study was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (grant no. 17-78-30028) (in the part of psychological testing), the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Bashkortostan (agreement no. 1, December 2, 2022) (in the part of biomaterials preparation and genoty**), the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Russian Federation (no. 075-15-2021-595) (in the part of statistical analysis). DNA samples for the study were provided by the IBG UFRC RAS collection “Collection of human biological materials” developed within the project of Bioresource collections of the FASO of Russia (project no. 007-030164/2).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Biochemistry and Genetics—Subdivision of the Ufa Federal Research Centre, Russian Academy of Sciences, 450054, Ufa, Russia

    A. V. Kazantseva, Yu. D. Davydova, R. F. Enikeeva, D. V. Yakovleva & E. K. Khusnutdinova

  2. Ufa University of Science and Technology, Laboratory of Neurocognitive Genetics, Department of Genetics and Fundamental Medicine, 450076, Ufa, Russia

    R. F. Enikeeva, D. V. Yakovleva & E. K. Khusnutdinova

  3. Bashkir State Medical University, Department of Medical Genetics and Fundamental Medicine, 450008, Ufa, Russia

    R. N. Mustafin & E. K. Khusnutdinova

  4. Russian Academy of Education, 119121, Moscow, Russia

    M. M. Lobaskova

  5. Psychological Institute of Russian Academy of Education, 125009, Moscow, Russia

    S. B. Malykh

  6. Moscow State University, 119991, Moscow, Russia

    S. B. Malykh

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  1. A. V. Kazantseva
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Correspondence to A. V. Kazantseva.

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Kazantseva, A.V., Davydova, Y.D., Enikeeva, R.F. et al. Individual Variance in Human Aggression: A Combined Effect of Polygenic Score and Social/Lifestyle Factors. Russ J Genet 59 (Suppl 2), S227–S236 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1022795423140065

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