title: Is the gene-environment interaction paradigm relevant to genome-wide studies? The case of education and body mass index.
abstract: This study uses data from the Framingham Heart Study to examine the relevance of the gene-environment interaction paradigm for genome-wide association studies (GWAS). We use completed college education as our environmental measure and estimate the interactive effect of genotype and education on body mass index (BMI) using 260,402 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Our results highlight the sensitivity of parameter estimates obtained from GWAS models and the difficulty of framing genome-wide results using the existing gene-environment interaction typology. We argue that SNP-environment interactions across the human genome are not likely to provide consistent evidence regarding genetic influences on health that differ by environment. Nevertheless, genome-wide data contain rich information about individual respondents, and we demonstrate the utility of this type of data. We highlight the fact that GWAS is just one use of genome-wide data, and we encourage demographers to develop methods that incorporate this vast amount of information from respondents into their analyses.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, 1440 15th Street, Boulder, CO, 80309-0483, USA, boardman@colorado.edu.
authors.forename: Jason D
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Boardman
authors.forename: Benjamin W
authors.initials: BW
authors.lastname: Domingue
authors.forename: Casey L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Blalock
authors.forename: Brett C
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: Haberstick
authors.forename: Kathleen Mullan
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.forename: Matthew B
authors.initials: MB
authors.lastname: McQueen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D015992:Body Mass Index; D004522:Educational Status; D005260:Female; D059647:Gene-Environment Interaction; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology