The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics (WTCHG) was established in 1994 to undertake research into the genetic basis of common diseases. Since June 2000 the Centre has been located in the Henry Wellcome Building of Genomic Medicine, University of Oxford.
Genetic linkage of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder on chromosome 16p13, in a region implicated in autism.
Susan L. Smalley,1,2 Vlad Kustanovich,3 Sonia L. Minassian,1,4 Jennifer L. Stone,3
Matthew N. Ogdie,3 James J. McGough,2 James T. McCracken,2 I. Laurence MacPhie,5
Clyde Francks,5 Simon E. Fisher,5 Rita M. Cantor,3 Anthony P. Monaco,5
and Stanley F. Nelson1,3.
1Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics and Departments of 2Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, 3Human Genetics, and 4Biostatistics, University of California, Los Angeles; and 5Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Oxford, United Kingdom
The scientific objective of the Centre is to explore all aspects of the genetic susceptibility of disease including the localisation of genes involved in common diseases, characterisation of the variants responsible for susceptibility, the understanding of how these DNA variants may contribute to risk of disease in the population and finally, how such genetic factors contribute biologically to a disease process.
The Centre houses multi-disciplinary research teams in human genetics, functional genomics, bioinformatics, statistical genetics and structural biology.
Genetic linkage of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder on chromosome 16p13, in a region implicated in autism.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most commonly diagnosed behavioral disorder in childhood and likely represents an extreme of normal behavior. ADHD significantly impacts learning in school-age children and leads to impaired functioning throughout the life span. There is strong evidence for a genetic etiology of the disorder, although putative alleles, principally in dopamine-related pathways suggested by candidate-gene studies, have very small effect sizes. We use affected-sib-pair analysis in 203 families to localize the first major susceptibility locus for ADHD to a 12-cM region on chromosome 16p13 (maximum LOD score 4.2; P=.000005), building upon an earlier genomewide scan of this disorder. The region overlaps that highlighted in three genome scans for autism, a disorder in which inattention and hyperactivity are common, and physically maps to a 7-Mb region on 16p13. These findings suggest that variations in a gene on 16p13 may contribute to common deficits found in both ADHD and autism.