title: The Genetics and Epigenetics of PTSD: Overview, Recent Advances, and Future Directions.
abstract: This paper provides a brief summary and commentary on the growing literature and current developments related to the genetic underpinnings of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We first briefly provide an overview of the behavioral genetic literature on PTSD, followed by a short synopsis of the substantial candidate gene literature with a focus on genes that have been meta-analyzed. We then discuss the genome-wide association studies (GWAS) that have been conducted, followed by an introduction to other molecular platforms used in PTSD genomic studies, such as epigenetic and expression approaches. We close with a discussion of developments in the field that include the creation of the PTSD workgroup of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium, statistical advances that can be applied to GWAS data to answer questions of heritability and genetic overlap across phenotypes, and bioinformatics techniques such as gene pathway analyses which will further advance our understanding of the etiology of PTSD.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Christina M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Sheerin
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Mackenzie J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Lind
authors.affiliation: National Crime Victim Research & Treatment Center (NCVC), Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA.
authors.forename: Kaitlin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Bountress
authors.affiliation: Bradley/Hasbro Children's Research Center of Rhode Island Hospital and Departments of Psychiatry and Human Behavior and Pediatrics in Alpert Medical School of Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
authors.forename: Nicole R
authors.initials: NR
authors.lastname: Nugent
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Virginia Institute of Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA; Department of Human and Molecular Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA.
authors.forename: Ananda B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Amstadter