{"id":1206,"date":"2010-12-21T06:48:52","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T11:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/?p=1206"},"modified":"2019-10-27T06:49:37","modified_gmt":"2019-10-27T10:49:37","slug":"warrior-gene-not-so-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/2010\/12\/21\/warrior-gene-not-so-much\/","title":{"rendered":"Warrior gene, not so much"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My friend found a solution for my question of what he terms the ‘manliness’ gene! I will briefly protest that neither are all belligerent hot-sauce administering warriors men, nor are all men warriors, and then move on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solution is to use some of that basic genetics knowledge that I should have remembered from the early 2000’s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The key is that while we can’t use the SNPs to directly<\/strong> measure the trait in question, we can take advantage of the fact that they are located on that same relatively small chunk of DNA. These SNPs associate<\/strong> with this particular mutation, meaning merely that they tend to vary along with it. If we assume that the SNPs will vary – give or take – at the same rate as the tandem repeat, and if we can find someone who measured both the SNPs and the trait on a decent sized population, then we might be back in business. As he says: it wouldn't do for the block to be coherent *except for* the one variable little piece that actually matters<\/code>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once again, we bang up against that annoying definition of “genes.” I’m now dragging in some other<\/strong> study about a different<\/strong> thing. This is, in the very small, why good scientists are so very thorough and paranoid about making declarative statements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, here’s his answer:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paper briefly describes some markers around MAOA: http:\/\/www.biomedcentral.com\/1471-2156\/6\/46<\/a><\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You have SNP states at these MAOA markers described in the paper: rs3788862, rs6323, rs979605. Looking at Figure 1, right side:<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n

marker    you   A1 A2 A3 A4\nrs3788862 A\/T   C  T  T  C\nrs6323    G\/C   A  C  A  C\nrs979605  A\/T   C  T  C  T\n            ^      ^<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
So it looks to me like you have type A2 -- or at least, you share these SNPs with the A2 set of this sample of Swedish individuals. The chance of coming to this configuration by chance is on the order of 1\/64 (not quite, since the sites aren't independent). And: \"Only two common haplotype variants of the MAOA locus were found among individuals of northern European ancestry.\"<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trait association: \"Two MAOA haplotypes, A1 and A3, both sharing identical alleles at the three first haplotype positions (CCA-) (Figure 1), were associated with a significant decrease in trbc-MAO activity\" You are A2; so I presume you have higher trbc-MAO activity. Skimming the PNAS paper, I see that \"individuals with the low activity form of MAOA proved more likely to administer hot sauce to their opponent.\" So I conclude that if you and Attila the Hun were in a hot-sauce-administering contest, you would lose.<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n
My friends are clever. Until someone shows me a study involving more than 573 Swedes, I’ve got my answer. Of couse, that’s a mark of decent scientific thinking: I’ve found an acceptable answer based on the available information. I also have a decent grasp on where I might be wrong, and I retain a fair degree of curiosity about what else might be down this superficially simple rat-hole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My friend found a solution for my question of what he terms the ‘manliness’ gene! I will briefly protest that neither are all belligerent hot-sauce administering warriors men, nor are all men warriors, and then move on. The solution is to use some of that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genomics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1207,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions\/1207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}