The Twinning Genetics Consortium (TGC) was founded about 10 years ago and aims to identify the genes and epigenetic mechanisms that contribute to the formation of dizygotic and monozygotic twins ("twinning"). This meeting will bring together experts in twin research, human genetics, clinical genetics, epigenetics, animal genetics, molecular biology, embryology, and stem cell biology. They will discuss the next steps required to discover genes involved in twinning and to study the underlying mechanisms of twinning, fertility, and congenital disorders.

The Consortium on Individual Development (CID) aims to understand how differences between children arise as a result of the interplay of child characteristics, environment, and intergenerational transmission. More specifically, CID studies the transmission of behavior across generations, the role of parenting and genetic factors herein. Recently this type of study received a huge impulse, based on the insight that the parental genotype shapes the environment in which their children grow up (environmental transmission) whereas parents transmit only 50% of their alleles to their offspring (genetic transmission). This insight can be exploited in a novel design to disentangle these pathways. If outcome data in children and genotype information in the child and both parents are available, the effects of both transmitted and non-transmitted alleles on a trait can be summarized in polygenic scores (PGS) and the association with outcomes assessed. The non-transmitted PGS can only affect offspring through the environment, via genetically influenced behaviors of parents, called genetic nurturing. Here, we examine genetic-nurturing effects on three outcomes in offspring, i.e. BMI, smoking, and self-rated health, employing the data of 6,000 genotyped parent-offspring trios from the Netherlands Twin Register. We will look at PGS that index the genetic contributions to parental socio-economic status (SES), because children from lower SES families are at increased risk for poor health. This study will shed light on the role of socioeconomic status and inter-generation transmission in shaping children’s health and enable the candidate to expand his network and master new approaches in genetic epidemiology.

Does your child read well because you have read to them, or because you have passed on beneficial genes? And do your genes influence how much you read to your child? A psychological scientist will study in parents and children how genes and the home environment influence educational achievement. To discover which factors influence how children learn and progress, she will offer families access to online literacy and math games designed to boost learning.

Developing fluent and effortless reading is a major focus of educational training in the early school years and forms the foundation for the remainder of the curriculum. Given the importance of reading, we know surprisingly little about the interplay between genes and environment that influences reading development. Previous research has identified characteristics of childrens environment that are related to their reading ability. However, environmental differences between children are not independent of their genes. For instance, families with a strong genetic predisposition to dyslexia may have fewer books in the home because they do not enjoy reading. This concept is called gene-environment correlation (rGE) and is the focus of this proposal, leading to the following research questions: * What is the relative importance of genes and culture in transmitting reading ability from parent to child? If both mechanisms are of importance, this will induce rGE. * To which environmental exposures is reading ability linked? E.g. frequency of reading, or literacy practices at home? Is the association mediated by genetic or environmental factors and are environmental exposures themselves influenced by genotype? * Which genes account for the heritability of reading? I will tackle these questions by an advanced combination of methodologies: a longitudinal twin study, an extended twin-family study, and a gene-finding study. Phenotyping the required thousands of participants is feasible by using existing high-quality data and the development of a web-based reading test. The project bridges biological psychology, educational sciences, statistics, twin studies, and molecular genetics. The outcomes will generate insight in how to interpret previously established correlates of reading ability. Educational and clinical settings will benefit from the novel web-based reading test and from knowledge that can be implemented in reading-intervention programmes. Genetic research on reading in the Dutch language is currently lacking. This Veni will launch that field.

People who feel well, function better, and have more sustainable relationships. Using advanced data analyses techniques and wellbeing training in large samples with (epi) genetic, metabolome, and exposome data, the paths to and from wellbeing will be mapped. With this new knowledge, it becomes feasible to maintain and improve wellbeing for all.