Genome-wide association studies have helped us identify thousands of common variants associated with several widespread complex diseases. However, for most traits, these variants account for only a small fraction of phenotypic variance or heritability. Next-generation sequencing technologies are being used to identify additional rare variants hypothesized to have higher effect sizes than the al...

The link between callous-unemotional (CU) traits in youth and delinquent, aggressive and violent behavior has been well-replicated in the literature. However, the mediating effects of violence exposure on this relationship are unclear. The current study addresses this important gap in the literature with a sample of 88 detained, primarily ethnic minority adolescent males (M age = 15.57; SD = 1....

Genome-wide association studies have been successful in identifying loci contributing effects to a range of complex human traits. The majority of reproducible associations within these loci are with common variants, each of modest effect, which together explain only a small proportion of heritability. It has been suggested that much of the unexplained genetic component of complex traits can thu...

Carcass traits of beef cattle have been genetically improved to increase yield of high quality meat. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) is a powerful method to identify genetic variants associated with carcass traits. For the 770K genotyped SNPs from 1141 Chinese Simmental cattle, we used the compressed mixed linear model (CMLM) to perform a genome-wide association study for knuckle, biceps a...

Research shows that individuals with psychopathic traits differ in how they process negative emotional stimuli. However, it is unclear whether these differences are specific to certain types of negative emotional stimulus and whether they are more strongly associated with psychopathic traits or aggression. Further, it is not clear whether or not deficits in emotional processing generalize to fe...

Risky sexual behavior (RSB) is associated with a variety of negative health and social consequences including STDs and unplanned pregnancies. The present study focused on the association between psychopathic personality traits and RSB. College students (N = 511) completed self-report measures of RSB, psychopathic personality traits, and sensation seeking. When sensation seeking, Fearless Domina...

Association analysis through linkage disequilibrium is a useful new tool for the dissection of complex traits and identification of superior alleles at genes identified. Presented here are the results in the search for DNA polymorphisms associated with drought tolerance, a highly quantitative trait in maize, using the candidate gene approach. The drought association mapping test characterized 3...

The micromolar calcium activated neutral protease (CAPN1) and calpastatin (CAST) have been widely regarded as genes related to muscle growth and meat tenderness. The objective of this study was to verify the association of SNPs of CAPN1 and CAST genes with carcass and tenderness traits and search the possible change patterns of SNPs in CAPN1 and CAST genes in six generations of broiler breeding...

abiotic stresses and lack of nutrients are one of the most important factors in reducing the crop yield.  vigorous and developed roots can facilitate uptake of water and nutrients more efficiently making it essential for enhancing the yield. association mapping is currently one of the approaches for detecting quantitative trait loci (qtls) influencing complex traits. this approach was used to d...

Genome-wide association studies and, more recently, next-generation sequencing studies have accelerated the investigation of complex human traits by providing a wealth of association data linking genetic variants to diseases and other phenotypic traits. These data promise to transform our understanding of the molecular pathways underlying complex human traits, but only if functional evaluation ...