Dr. A. (Aysu) Okbay
PhD Track Essays on Genetics and the Social Sciences
This thesis explores questions at the intersection of economics and biology, and thus contributes to an emerging field of research commonly referred to as: genoeconomics, social-science genetics, biosocial science and biological economics.
Evidence from behavior-genetic studies of twins, adoptees and other pairs of relatives shows that virtually all human traits, including economic preferences and behaviors are at least moderately heritable. With more and more genetic data becoming available, it is increasingly becoming feasible to identify specific genetic variants associated with complex outcomes, thus blurring the disciplinary boundaries between the biological and social sciences. The research described here identifies specific genetic variants robustly associated with a suite of complex outcomes – ranging from educational attainment, to subjective well-being, neuroticism and depression – and shows how these findings can be used, in conjunction with quasi-experimental research designs from economics, to conduct rigorous and well-powered investigations of the interactions between genes and environment. It illustrates some hard-won lessons about the relative merits of various research strategies that have been proposed for efforts to discover genetic associations with complex traits. Furthermore, it provides a framework for quantifying trade-offs between outcome measure heterogeneity and sample-size in gene-discovery efforts.
Though considerable uncertainty remains about the ultimate value of genetic data in the social sciences, the results reported here strongly suggest that there will be at least some settings in which genetic data will prove valuable.
- Keywords
- genome-wide association study, educational attainment, subjective well-being, neuroticism, depressive symptoms, gene-by-environment interaction, polygenic score, heritability, statistical power
- Time frame
- 2012 - 2017
Publications
Article (13)
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Academic (13)
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Bipolar Disorder Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (2022). Multivariate GWAS of psychiatric disorders and their cardinal symptoms reveal two dimensions of cross-cutting genetic liabilities. Cell Genomics, 2(6), Article 100140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xgen.2022.100140
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23andMe Inc., Social Science Genetic Association Consortium, & The LifeLines Cohort Study (2022). Polygenic prediction of educational attainment within and between families from genome-wide association analyses in 3 million individuals. Nature Genetics, 54(4), 437-449. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-022-01016-z
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Meddens, SFW., De Vlaming, R., Bowers, P., Burik, CAP., Linner, RK., Lee, C., Okbay, A., Turley, P., Rietveld, N., Fontana, MA., Benjamin, DJ., Chow, CC., & Koellinger, PD. (2020). Genomic analysis of diet composition finds novel loci and associations with health and lifestyle. Molecular Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-020-0697-5
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23andMe Inc., eQTLgen Consortium, International Cannabis Consortium, Social Science Genetic Association Consortium, Karlsson Linnér, R., Biroli, P., Kong, E., Meddens, S. F. W., Wedow, R., Fontana, M. A., Lebreton, M., Tino, S. P., Abdellaoui, A., Hammerschlag, A. R., Nivard, M. G., Okbay, A., Rietveld, C. A., Timshel, P. N., Trzaskowski, M., ... Ikram, M. A. (2019). Genome-wide association analyses of risk tolerance and risky behaviors in over 1 million individuals identify hundreds of loci and shared genetic influences. Nature Genetics, 51(2), 245-257. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-018-0309-3, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-018-0309-3
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Bansal, V., Mitjans, M., Burik, CAP., Linnér, RK., Okbay, A., Rietveld, N., Begemann, M., Bonn, S., Ripke, S., De Vlaming, R., Nivard, MG., Ehrenreich, H., & Koellinger, PD. (2018). Genome-wide association study results for educational attainment aid in identifying genetic heterogeneity of schizophrenia. Nature Communications, 9, Article 3078. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05510-z
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Vlaming, R., Okbay, A., Rietveld, N., Johannesson, M., Magnusson, PKE., Uitterlinden, A., van Rooij, FJA., Hofman, B., Groenen, P., Thurik, R., & Koellinger, PD. (2017). Meta-GWAS Accuracy and Power (MetaGAP) calculator shows that hiding heritability is partially due to imperfect genetic correlations across studies. PLoS Genetics (online), 13(1), Article e1006495. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1006495
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Sniekers, S., Stringer, S., Watanabe, K., Jansen, P., Coleman, JRI., Krapohl, E., Taskesen, E., Hammerschlag, AR., Okbay, A., Zabaneh, D., Amin, N., Breen, G., Cesarini, D., Chabris, CF., Iacono, WG., Ikram, A., Johannesson, M., Koellinger, P., Lee, JJ., ... Posthuma, D. (2017). Genome-wide association meta-analysis of 78,308 individuals identifies new loci and genes influencing human intelligence. Nature Genetics, 49(7), 1107-1112. https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.3869
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Weiss, A., Baselmans, BML., Hofer, E., Yang, JY., Okbay, A., Lind, PA., Miller, MB., Nolte, IM., Zhao, W., Hagenaars, SP., Hottenga, JJ., Matteson, LK., Snieder, H., Faul, JD., Hartman, CA., Boyle, PA., Tiemeier, H., Mosing, MA., Pattie, A., ... Luciano, M. (2016). 1 Personality Polygenes, Positive Affect, and Life Satisfaction. Twin Research and Human Genetics, 19(5), 407-417. https://doi.org/10.1017/thg.2016.65
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Okbay, A., Beauchamp, JP., Fontana, MA., Lee, JJ., Pers, TH., Rietveld, N., Turley, P., Chen, GB., Emilsson, V., Meddens, SFW., Oskarsson, S., Pickrell, JK., Thom, K., Timshel, P., Vlaming, R., Abdellaoui, A., Ahluwalia, TS., Bacelis, J., Baumbach, C., ... Benjamin, DJ. (2016). Genome-wide association study identifies 74 loci associated with educational attainment. Nature, 533(7604), 539-542. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17671
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Okbay, A., Baselmans, BML., De Neve, JE., Turley, P., Nivard, MG., Fontana, MA., Meddens, SFW., Linner, RK., Rietveld, CA., Derringer, J., Gratten, J., Lee, JJ., Liu, JZ., de Vlaming, R., Ahluwalia, TS., Buchwald, J., Cavadino, A., Frazier-Wood, AC., Furlotte, NA., ... Cesarini, D. (2016). Genetic variants associated with subjective well-being, depressive symptoms, and neuroticism identified through genome-wide analyses. Nature Genetics, 48(6), 624-633. https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.3552
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Hill, WD., Hagenaars, SP., Marioni, RE., Harris, SE., Liewald, DCM., Davies, G., Okbay, A., McIntosh, AM., Gale, C. R., & Deary, IJ. (2016). Molecular Genetic Contributions to Social Deprivation and Household Income in UK Biobank. Current Biology, 26(22), 3083-3089. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.09.035
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Marioni, RE., Ritchie, S. J., Joshi, PK., Hagenaars, SP., Okbay, A., Fischer, K., Adams, M. J., Hill, WD., Davies, G., Nagyk, R., Amadork, C., Lall, K., Metspalu, A., Liewald, DC., Campbell, A., Wilson, JF., Hayward, C., Esko, T., Porteous, DJ., ... Deary, IJ. (2016). Genetic variants linked to education predict longevity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A., 113(47), 13366-13371. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1605334113
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Okbay, A., & Rietveld, N. (2015). On improving the credibility of candidate gene studies: A review of candidate gene studies published in Emotion. Emotion, 15(4), 531-537. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000076
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Doctoral Thesis (1)
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Internal (1)
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Okbay, A. (2017). Essays on Genetics and the Social Sciences. [Doctoral Thesis, Erasmus University Rotterdam]. Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam (EUR).
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Working paper (1)
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Academic (1)
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Bansal, V., Mitjans, M., Burik, CAP., Karlsson Linner, R., Okbay, A., Rietveld, N., Begemann, M., Bonn, S., Ripke, S., Nivard, MM., Ehrenreich, H., & Koellinger, PD. (2017). Genetics of educational attainment aid in identifying biological subcategories of schizophrenia. BioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/114405
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Event (1)
Address
Netherlands
Supervisory Team
