The Contribution of Rare and Common Variants in 30 Genes to Risk Nicotine Dependence

Genetic and functional studies have revealed that both common and rare variants of several nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (nAChR) subunits are associated with nicotine dependence (ND). In this study, we identified variants in 30 candidate genes including nicotinic receptors in 200 sib pairs selected from the Mid-South Tobacco Family (MSTF) population with equal numbers of African Americans (AAs) and European Americans (EAs). We selected 135 of the rare and common variants and genotyped them in the Mid-South Tobacco Case-Control (MSTCC) population, which consists of 3088 AAs and 1430 EAs. None of the genotyped common variants showed significant association with smoking status (smokers vs. non-smokers), Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND) scores, or indexed cigarettes per day (CPD) after Bonferroni correction. Rare variants in NRXN1, CHRNA9, CHRNA2, NTRK2, GABBR2, GRIN3A, DNM1, NRXN2, NRXN3, and ARRB2 were significantly associated with smoking status in the MSTCC AA sample, with Weighted Sum Statistic (WSS) P values ranging from 2.42 × 10(−3) to 1.31 × 10(−4) after 10(6) phenotype rearrangements. We also observed a significant excess of rare nonsynonymous variants exclusive to EA smokers in NRXN1, CHRNA9, TAS2R38, GRIN3A, DBH, ANKK1/DRD2, NRXN3, and CDH13 with WSS P values between 3.5 × 10(−5) and 1 × 10(−6). Variants rs142807401 (A432T) and rs139982841 (A452V) in CHRNA9 and variants V132L, V389L, rs34755188 (R480H), and rs75981117 (N549S) in GRIN3A are of particular interest because they are found in both the AA and EA samples. A significant aggregate contribution of rare and common coding variants in CHRNA9 to the risk for ND (SKAT-C: P= 0.0012) was detected by applying the combined sum test in MSTCC EAs. Together, our results indicate that rare variants alone or combined with common variants in a subset of 30 biological candidate genes contribute substantially to the risk of ND.