Jason D. Boardman, Ph.D. - US grants

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant):The goal of this Research Career Award is to elaborate on the mechanisms that link genetic characteristics and the social environment to 2 important outcomes among adolescents and young adults: (1) ill-health and (2) delinquency. This project will pay particular attention to the social context in which known genetic risk factors are given expression as well as genetic characteristics that facilitate resiliency in the face of social disadvantage. The project will build on the existing infrastructural capacity, cross-disciplinary collaboration, and mentorship available at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the emerging discipline of behavioral genetics. This training proposal includes: (1) direct instruction and supervision by leading experts in the substantive and methodological area of behavioral genetics, (2) enrollment in courses and seminars by researchers in social science, behavioral science, and medical science disciplines, (3) participation in workshops in sibling association and linkage analysis methodologies, and (4) regular participation in national conferences in population studies and behavioral genetics. The research proposal aims to utilize data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and the Rochester Youth Developmental Survey in conjunction with genetic information of respondents to examine the interaction between biological characteristics of individuals and their immediate social environment as determinants of differential developmental trajectories in the early stages of the life course. The long-term goal of this project is to collect original data in an effort to highlight the social determinants of genetic expression. These studies would be structured around the hypotheses and findings that stem from this project.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal requests two years of funding to support a conference entitled Integrating Genetics and the Social Sciences (IGSS) to be held at the University of Colorado at Boulder during the summers of 2011 and 2012. This two day conference will showcase new empirical work on gene-environment interplay among social scientists and will strive to define the contours of this new and exciting area. The 2010 conference has received funding from the Population Association of America, the NICHD funded University of Colorado Population Center (CUPC), and the department of sociology at the University of Colorado. The purpose of this proposal is to request funds to continue this conference for an additional two years. We have secured support from the Institute of Behavioral Science, the Institute for Behavioral Genetics, the CU Population Center, and the Department of Sociology for the continuation of this conference for an additional two years. This conference will build upon a previous short course at the CUPC and it will have the explicit goal of publishing the findings that are presented. The journal Biodemography and Social Biology has agreed to publish a selection of the papers from the 2010 conference in a special issue dedicated to gene-environment issues within demographic research and we anticipate a similar structure in 2011 and 2012. The goals of this proposal are: (1) to provide a venue for the leaders in the area of gene-environment interplay to share their theoretical, methodological, and substantive knowledge with one another;(2) to produce new and interdisciplinary publications in the area of gene-environment interplay;and (3) to identify new issues that are, to date, understudied in this area. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The conference has a substantive focus on health, health behaviors, morbidity, and mortality. This conference will bridge genetic and social epidemiology to provide new insights into long standing public health issues. We anticipate a section of the conference to be dedicated to the policy implications of this work.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Evidence from biometric and molecular studies indicates that genetic factors significantly influence body mass among humans. This has led to recent efforts to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across to the entire human genome that are associated with adult and adolescent weight. However, all existing genome wide association (GWA) studies of body mass and obesity have focused on main genetic effects rather than interaction effects between genetic and environmental factors. This leads to gene-environment interaction (GxE) studies that focus on environmental factors that moderate genetic main effects. In the event that there are only genetic effects within particular environments (e.g., no main genetic effects), then current GWA models will overlook important genetic influences. Because body mass is strongly influenced by social environmental factors and because genetic associations for body mass are contingent upon social- environmental influences, environmental risk (and protective) factors must be included in the conceptual understandings and methodological approaches to GWA. While GxE studies involving a single genetic variant are increasingly common, no existing work has specifically focused on genome-wide approaches to GxE. Our approach is a fundamentally new way of examining genetic influences on body mass that extends established GWA methods and draws upon established GxE theory.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal requests five years of funding to support the continuation of the conference entitled Integrating Genetics and the Social Sciences (IGSS) which has been held annually at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 2010-2012. This two day conference will showcase new empirical work on gene-environment interplay among social scientists and will strive to define the contours of this new and exciting area. The 2010 conference was supported by the Population Association of America, the NICHD funded University of Colorado Population Center (CUPC), and the Department of Sociology at the University of Colorado. The 2011 and 2012 meetings were supported by an R13 (R13 HD066811) and in this new submission, support is being sought to continue this conference for the next five years. As with the previous grant, the goals of this proposal are: (1) to provide a venue for the leaders in the area of gene-environment interplay to share their theoretical, methodological, and substantive knowledge with one another; (2) to produce new and interdisciplinary publications in the area of gene-environment interplay; and (3) to identify new issues that are, to date, understudied in this area. An important addition to this proposal is the inclusion of a one-day workshop on the current methods in statistical genetics provided by leaders in the area.

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Most health behavior outcomes of interest to social demographers are affected by both environmental and genetic factors but current methods for handling these two predictors of interest tend to be restricted to specific (e.g., sibling or famil-based) study designs. In the proposed project, we will develop a multi-level model that can account for both types of predictors across multiple study designs and, perhaps even more importantly, can utilize any and all genetic information that is available (e.g., estimated genetic relationship between related AND unrelated pairs using genome-wide data or assumed relationship based on family structure). In this study, we first verify the proposed method via a series of detailed and extensive simulations. We will then demonstrate the usefulness of this method empirically using genetic and phenotypic data of interest to demographers (e.g., BMI and smoking) from two generations of family members and unrelated respondents in the Framingham Heart Study.

PROJECT SUMMARY In response to RFA-HD-15-009 for the Population Dynamics Centers Research Infrastructure FY 2015 (P2C), the University of Colorado at Boulder Population Center (CUPC) requests five years of funding from NICHD for infrastructure support. With its first center award in 2010, CUPC made substantial progress in the size and quality of the faculty affiliates, the number of external grants, and its professional presence and scholarly influence in population research. With continued center funding, we propose to build on this progress with innovative work in our primary research areas; collaborative ties across disciplines; institutional ties with colleagues in other universities and nations; mentoring and support for a group of promising junior faculty; center support for excellence in population science research; and increased external funding. Toward these goals, the proposal describes the three primary research areas of the center: health and mortality; migration and spatial demography; and environmental demography. It also describes plans to scale up funding support, advance several new research initiatives, target novel and significant research with center funding, and bring in scholars with new expertise and shared interests in population topics. The activities all aim to increase the pace and impact of center research. The center requests three infrastructure cores: The Administrative Core provides crucial services to all affiliates, including clerical, bibliographic, editing, and grants management support for research projects. The Development Core provides seed awards to allow researchers ? particularly junior affiliates ? to begin and develop innovative research and improve chances for external funding. It further provides leadership for several new initiatives that expand our primary research areas. The Scientific/Technical (or Data) Core deals with issues relating to the access, management, processing, and analysis of data. It supports a first-rate computing and technology environment for handling large and complex data sets and makes use of affiliate expertise for statistical training and consultation.

Project Summary We propose a new, collaborative, and interdisciplinary training in demography, genetics, and aging by faculty in the Institute of Behavioral Science (IBS) and the Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG) at the University of Colorado Boulder. Together with participating aging experts from the University of Colorado Denver, the program will include four cohorts of pre-doctoral and postdoctoral trainees over a five year period. The program is comprised of 14 faculty from 6 departments affiliated with IBS (Economics, Sociology, Anthropology, Geography, History, and Political Science), 10 faculty from 3 departments affiliated with IBG (Psychology, Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology, and Integrative Physiology), and 4 faculty from 3 departments at the University of Colorado Denver (Health and Behavioral Sciences, Sociology, School of Medicine). Researchers from the two institutes have had success with collaborative research projects sponsored by NIH and these projects have produced important contributions to the social and biological sciences. IBG has a formal and successful training program and the Population Program within IBS has recently implemented a smaller Demography Certificate program but to date there are no formal mechanisms in place to link these two programs for a regular training in both demography and behavioral genetics. Our proposed pre-doctoral training in both demography and genetics involves 11 core required courses, including 3 courses on aging, and 2 secondary courses in demography and behavior genetics over a three year period. Postdoctoral trainees will enroll in at least one course per year. All trainees will participate in IBG's journal club. They will present at the Population Association of America, Behavior Genetics, and Gerontological Society of America annual meetings. They will participate in the Integrating Genetics and the Social Sciences annual conference in Boulder and they will enroll in a course specifically designed for training in Demography and Genetics. They will also receive specialized training from specialty methods workshops on demography, genetics and aging. Finally they will write and present the capstone third year paper. In line with NIH suggestions from the Biomedical Research Workforce Working Group, trainees will be monitored regularly with Individual Development Plans.