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Effects of the peer metagenomic environment on smoking behavior

Recent scholarship suggests that the genomes of those around us affect our own phenotypes. Much of the empirical evidence for such “metagenomic” effects comes from animal studies, where the socio-genetic environment can be easily manipulated. Among humans, it is more difficult to identify such effec...

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Autores principales: Sotoudeh, Ramina, Harris, Kathleen Mullan, Conley, Dalton
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: National Academy of Sciences 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6697801/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31363050
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1806901116
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author Sotoudeh, Ramina
Harris, Kathleen Mullan
Conley, Dalton
author_facet Sotoudeh, Ramina
Harris, Kathleen Mullan
Conley, Dalton
author_sort Sotoudeh, Ramina
collection PubMed
description Recent scholarship suggests that the genomes of those around us affect our own phenotypes. Much of the empirical evidence for such “metagenomic” effects comes from animal studies, where the socio-genetic environment can be easily manipulated. Among humans, it is more difficult to identify such effects given the nonrandom distribution of genes and environments. Here we leverage the as-if-random distribution of grade-mates’ genomes conditional on school-level variation in a nationally representative sample. Specifically, we evaluate whether one’s peers’ genetic propensity to smoke affects one’s own smoking behavior net of one’s own genotype. Results show that peer genetic propensity to smoke has a substantial effect on an individual’s smoking outcome. This is true not only when the peer group includes direct friends, and therefore where the individual plays an active role in shaping the metagenomic context but also when the peer group includes all grade-mates and thus in cases where the individual does not select the metagenomic environment. We explore these effects further and show that a small minority with high genetic risk to smoke (‘bad apples’) can greatly affect the smoking behavior of an entire grade. The methodology used in this paper offers a potential solution to many of the challenges inherent in estimating peer effects in nonexperimental settings and can be utilized to study a wide range of outcomes with a genetic basis. On a policy level, our results suggest that efforts to reduce adolescent smoking should take into account metagenomic effects, especially bad apples, within social networks.
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spelling pubmed-66978012019-08-19 Effects of the peer metagenomic environment on smoking behavior Sotoudeh, Ramina Harris, Kathleen Mullan Conley, Dalton Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Social Sciences Recent scholarship suggests that the genomes of those around us affect our own phenotypes. Much of the empirical evidence for such “metagenomic” effects comes from animal studies, where the socio-genetic environment can be easily manipulated. Among humans, it is more difficult to identify such effects given the nonrandom distribution of genes and environments. Here we leverage the as-if-random distribution of grade-mates’ genomes conditional on school-level variation in a nationally representative sample. Specifically, we evaluate whether one’s peers’ genetic propensity to smoke affects one’s own smoking behavior net of one’s own genotype. Results show that peer genetic propensity to smoke has a substantial effect on an individual’s smoking outcome. This is true not only when the peer group includes direct friends, and therefore where the individual plays an active role in shaping the metagenomic context but also when the peer group includes all grade-mates and thus in cases where the individual does not select the metagenomic environment. We explore these effects further and show that a small minority with high genetic risk to smoke (‘bad apples’) can greatly affect the smoking behavior of an entire grade. The methodology used in this paper offers a potential solution to many of the challenges inherent in estimating peer effects in nonexperimental settings and can be utilized to study a wide range of outcomes with a genetic basis. On a policy level, our results suggest that efforts to reduce adolescent smoking should take into account metagenomic effects, especially bad apples, within social networks. National Academy of Sciences 2019-08-13 2019-07-30 /pmc/articles/PMC6697801/ /pubmed/31363050 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1806901116 Text en Copyright © 2019 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Social Sciences
Sotoudeh, Ramina
Harris, Kathleen Mullan
Conley, Dalton
Effects of the peer metagenomic environment on smoking behavior
title Effects of the peer metagenomic environment on smoking behavior
title_full Effects of the peer metagenomic environment on smoking behavior
title_fullStr Effects of the peer metagenomic environment on smoking behavior
title_full_unstemmed Effects of the peer metagenomic environment on smoking behavior
title_short Effects of the peer metagenomic environment on smoking behavior
title_sort effects of the peer metagenomic environment on smoking behavior
topic Social Sciences
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6697801/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31363050
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1806901116
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