Danks Seminar - Robert Plomin
- When
- Tuesday, 9 August 2022 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Professor Robert Plomin
Celebrating a century of research in behavioral genetics
Tuesday 12 July 4-5pm
Zoom/Location details: https://mcri.zoom.us/j/67898787522
A century after the first twin and adoption studies of behavior in the 1920s, I look back on the journey and celebrate milestones in behavioral genetic research. After a brief overview of early quantitative genetic and molecular genetic research, I will focus on the last fifty years, using cognitive development as an example. In the 1970s, genetics was just beginning to make inroads in the largely skeptical behavioral sciences. However, by the 1990s, quantitative genetic research convinced most scientists of the importance of genetics for all behavioral traits. This research told us at least as much about the environment as it did about genetics because previous environmental research had ignored genetics. Then, in the 1990s, just as quantitative genetic discoveries were beginning to slow down, molecular genetics made it possible to assess DNA variation directly. From a rocky start with candidate gene association research, by 2010 the technological advance of SNP chips had enabled genome-wide association studies. These studies confirmed R. A. Fisher's 1918 quantitative genetic theory that the ubiquitous heritability of behavioral traits is caused by small effects of many DNA variants. A century after Fisher's seminal paper, the ability to aggregate the effects of thousands of DNA variants in polygenic scores has created a DNA revolution in the behavioral sciences by making it possible to use DNA to predict individual differences in behavior from early in life. Polygenic scores cap a century of genetic research on behavior by integrating quantitative genetics and molecular genetics.
Speaker Bio:
Robert Plomin is MRC Research Professor in Behavioural Genetics at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London. In 1994 after positions in the US at the University of Colorado and Pennsylvania State University, he came to the Institute to help Professor Sir Michael Rutter launch the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Research Centre. The goal of the Centre is to bring together genetic and environmental strategies to understand individual differences in behavioural development, which characterises his research.
In 1995, Professor Plomin began the Twins Early Development Study (TEDS), which has followed 10,000 pairs of UK twins from infancy through early adulthood and has been continuously funded for 25 years as a programme grant from the Medical Research Council. He has published more than 800 papers and is the author of the best-selling textbook in the field as well as a dozen other books. His most recent book is Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are (Allen Lane, October 2018; paperback by Penguin, June 2019). Blueprint describes how the DNA revolution is transforming science, society and the way we think about ourselves.
Professor Plomin has been elected the youngest President of the international Behavior Genetics Association and has received lifetime research achievement awards from the major associations related to his field (Behavior Genetics Association, Association of Psychological Science, Society for Research in Child Development, International Society for Intelligence Research), as well as being made Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, British Academy, American Academy of Political and Social Science, and Academy of Medical Sciences (UK).