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A genome-wide linkage study of individuals with high scores on NEO personality traits

Molecular Psychiatry volume 17, pages 1031–1041 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

The NEO-Five-Factor Inventory divides human personality traits into five dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness. In this study, we sought to identify regions harboring genes with large effects on the five NEO personality traits by performing genome-wide linkage analysis of individuals scoring in the extremes of these traits (>90th percentile). Affected-only linkage analysis was performed using an Illumina 6K linkage array in a family-based study, the Erasmus Rucphen Family study. We subsequently determined whether distinct, segregating haplotypes found with linkage analysis were associated with the trait of interest in the population. Finally, a dense single-nucleotide polymorphism genotyping array (Illumina 318K) was used to search for copy number variations (CNVs) in the associated regions. In the families with extreme phenotype scores, we found significant evidence of linkage for conscientiousness to 20p13 (rs1434789, log of odds (LOD)=5.86) and suggestive evidence of linkage (LOD >2.8) for neuroticism to 19q, 21q and 22q, extraversion to 1p, 1q, 9p and12q, openness to 12q and 19q, and agreeableness to 2p, 6q, 17q and 21q. Further analysis determined haplotypes in 21q22 for neuroticism (P-values=0.009, 0.007), in 17q24 for agreeableness (marginal P-value=0.018) and in 20p13 for conscientiousness (marginal P-values=0.058, 0.038) segregating in families with large contributions to the LOD scores. No evidence for CNVs in any of the associated regions was found. Our findings imply that there may be genes with relatively large effects involved in personality traits, which may be identified with next-generation sequencing techniques.

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Acknowledgements

The ERF study was further supported by grants from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), Erasmus University Medical Center, the Centre for Medical Systems Biology (CMSB1 and CMSB2) of the Netherlands Genomics Initiative (NGI) and Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) for genotyping. We are grateful to all patients and their relatives, general practitioners and neurologists for their contributions and to Petra Veraart for her help in genealogy, Jeannette Vergeer for the supervision of the laboratory work and Peter Snijders for his help in data collection. ESG was supported by The International Human Frontier Science Program Organization.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    N Amin, M Schuur, A Isaacs, Y S Aulchenko, B A Oostra, A C J W Janssens & C M van Duijn

  2. Department of Molecular and Cellular Immunology, Institute of Molecular Genetics AS CR, Prague, Czech Republic

    E S Gusareva

  3. Centre for Medical Systems Biology, Leiden, The Netherlands

    A Isaacs & C M van Duijn

  4. Institute of Cytology and Genetics, Russian Academy of Science, Novosibirsk, Russia

    A V Kirichenko, I V Zorkoltseva & T I Axenovich

  5. Department of Cytology and Genetics, Novosibirsk State University, Novosibirsk, Russia

    T I Axenovich

  6. Department of Clinical Genetics, Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

    B A Oostra

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Amin, N., Schuur, M., Gusareva, E. et al. A genome-wide linkage study of individuals with high scores on NEO personality traits. Mol Psychiatry 17, 1031–1041 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/mp.2011.97

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