The Marriage Gene - 9/2/08

[Smartmarriages]

- THE MARRIAGE GENE - VASOPRESSIN 1A GENE
- THE BONDING GENE 

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Welcome back.  Summer is over and we can get back to work.  And what fun it
will be in this new world of DNA-Monogamy testing.  I'm sure you've already
seen the news ­ it's everywhere. I can't wait to see what Letterman, Leno
and Oprah will do with this one. I'm sure you have already started asking
yourself the questions. First, our brains go to the personal - do you (or
yours) have one allele or two?  Or, none?  How long till we see
over-the-counter allele test kits at the local pharmacy?  Or, at premarital
education classes?  I can just see the personal ads - "WSM - 32,
athletic,attorney, likes long walks and talks, certified allele free." Can
men with vasopressin receptors learn speaker/empathy skills and other 'stick
around and mingle after the copulation is through' behaviors?  Should we
adapt the courses - create special classes for two-allele men? A whole new
world of questions to distract us from summer's end. - diane


> vasopressin seems to play a much larger role in the brains of men rather than
> women. Beyond the immediate study on monogamy -- vasopressin seems to change
> how men, not women, behave in long-term relationships -- De Vries said there
> could be intriguing links between the Stockholm study and research into the
> causes of disorders such as autism.

> . . . it's too early for men to blame their inability to commit on a single
> gene, although Lucas guesses it's an excuse that's "certainly going to be
> used."
 
------------------------
> In a related study, also in the same issue of the journal, researchers at the
> Pacific Health Research Institute in Honolulu said they've identified a gene
> strongly linked to extended health and life span in humans. The FOXO3A gene,
> involved in insulin signaling, is just the second gene ever found that is
> closely tied to longevity, the researchers said. In their study of
> Japanese-American men, those who lived to an average age of 98 had a specific
> variant of FOXO3A compared to men who died at younger ages, the team said.

-----------------
Study Links Gene Variant in Men to Marital Discord
The Washington Post
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
September 2, 2008

Men are more likely to be devoted and loyal husbands when they lack a
particular variant of a gene that influences brain activity, researchers
announced yesterday -- the first time that science has shown a direct link
between a man's genes and his aptitude for monogamy.

The finding is striking because it not only links the gene variant -- which
is present in two of every five men -- with the risk of marital discord and
divorce, but also appears to predict whether women involved with these men
are likely to say their partners are emotionally close and available, or
distant and disagreeable. The presence of the gene variant, or allele, also
seems predictive of whether men get married or live with women without
getting married.

"Men with two copies of the allele had twice the risk of experiencing
marital dysfunction, with a threat of divorce during the last year, compared
to men carrying one or no copies," said Hasse Walum, a behavioral geneticist
at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm who led the study. "Women married
to men with one or two copies of the allele scored lower on average on how
satisfied they were with the relationship compared to women married to men
with no copies."

The scientists studied men because the hormone being examined is known to
play a larger role in their brains than in women's brains.

The finding set off a debate about whether people should conduct genetic
tests to find out whether potential mates are bad marriage prospects.
Several independent scientists called the discovery remarkable and elegant
but disagreed over whether such information ought to be used in making
personal decisions about love and marriage.

Walum said that the presence of the allele increased the risk of conjugal
discord, but that many other factors probably shape marital behavior.
However, he and other scientists said the study is the latest piece of
evidence to show that biology -- down to the level of individual genes --
can play a powerful role in shaping complex human behavior.

In other words, if a man's culture, religion and family background each have
a seat at the conference table that determines his attitudes toward marital
fidelity and monogamy, his genes might well sit at the head of the table.

"There are many ways this information can help a man and his wife when they
marry," said Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University
who studies romantic love. "Knowing there are biological weak links can help
you overcome them."

A man who knows he has this allele, she added, might be able to use the
knowledge to ignore tugs of restlessness he might feel in his marriage: "You
can say, 'Oh, it is just my DNA, and I am going to ignore it.' "

The allele that Walum and a team of scientists studied in a sample of more
than 1,000 heterosexual couples regulates the activity of a hormone in the
brain known as vasopressin. It dictates how and where vasopressin receptors
are situated in the brain. Effectively, said Larry J. Young, a psychiatrist
who studies the genetics of social behavior at Emory University, brain
receptors act like locks, and vasopressin acts like a key. The key works
only when there is a lock; in the absence of a receptor, vasopressin cannot
act.

About 40 percent of men have one or two copies of the allele. Walum, a PhD
student, said that men with two copies of the allele had a greater risk of
marital discord than men with one copy, and that men with one copy of the
allele were at more risk of such discord than men with no copies. The study
asked men in married or long-term relationships whether they had experienced
relationship crises in the past year that were of such intensity that they
considered divorce or splitting. The scientists also asked the wives and
partners of the men what it was like to live with them, examining levels of
affection, cohesion, consensus and satisfaction.

About 15 percent of the men without the allele reported serious marital
discord in the past year, compared with 34 percent of men with two copies of
the allele. Wives and partners of the men with two copies of the allele
reported lower levels of satisfaction, affection, cohesion and consensus in
the relationship than women married to men who had one or no copies of the
allele.

Seventeen percent of the men without the allele were living with women
without being married to them, compared with 32 percent of men with two
alleles doing so.

The study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.

Young praised the study, saying it extends a remarkable series of animal
experiments he and other scientists conducted some years ago. They showed
that the distribution of vasopressin receptors in the brain appears to
predict why males and females form lifelong pair-bonds in one species but
not in another.

The studies focused on two species that look nearly alike: prairie voles and
montane voles. The first time a male prairie vole mates with a female, he
forms a bond with her for life, breeding and raising successive litters.
Male montane voles think of sex as a series of one-night stands; they are
loners and do not bond with females or help raise offspring.

Young and others concluded that the difference between these species is
because of the same gene variant that Walum studied. In the kind of
experiments that cannot be replicated in humans, Young and others also
showed that manipulating vasopressin receptors in vole brains can turn loner
voles into devoted partners and fathers, and vice versa.

No one knows for sure whether the same mechanism is at work in humans.
Although humans are evolutionarily distant from voles, there are many
examples in nature that show that the action of genes is conserved across
distantly related species. In the monogamous voles, Young said, bonding
between animals seems to trigger vasopressin action in the brain's reward
circuits. Not surprisingly, this prompts the animals to seek to bond with
each other.

Geert J. de Vries, a neuroscientist at the University of Massachusetts in
Amherst who studies vasopressin, hailed the new study and said it dovetails
with work he and others have conducted that show vasopressin seems to play a
much larger role in the brains of men rather than women. Beyond the
immediate study on monogamy -- vasopressin seems to change how men, not
women, behave in long-term relationships -- De Vries said there could be
intriguing links between the Stockholm study and research into the causes of
disorders such as autism.

"If you look at what is most prominent in kids with autism, the big
difference is in social behavior," said De Vries, as he pointed out that
autism is far more common in boys than in girls. "In this study, they are
looking at social behavior related to marital status and the way men and
women interact . . . you could imagine variability in these alleles can
contribute to autism."

All the scientists emphasized that more work needs to be done to replicate
the finding, and to explore possible interactions between multiple genes and
environmental factors. Partnerships in marriage and long-term relationships,
moreover, involve many dimensions of behavior -- sexual desire, romantic
love and the loyalty that Walum's study focused on.

"What this means is that some people will go into marriage with a stronger
deck of cards," Fisher said. "But there are people genetically prone to
alcoholism who give up booze and make a good marriage. No one is saying
biology is destiny."

Fisher, who described herself as a romantic, said she would not reject a
potential mate who has two copies of the risky allele. She paused, then
added: "But I might not start a joint bank account with them for the first
few years."

Staff writer Rob Stein contributed to this report.
##########################
- THE BONDING GENE 

'Bonding Gene' Could Help Men Stay Married
By E.J. Mundell
HealthDay Reporter
September 1, 2008

MONDAY, Sept. 1 (HealthDay News) -- Whether a man has one type of gene
versus another could help decide whether he's good "husband material," a new
study suggests.

A study of Swedish twin brothers found that differences in a gene modulating
the hormone vasopressin were strongly tied to how well each man fared in
marriage.

"Our main finding was an association between a variant of the vasopressin
receptor 1a gene and how strong bonds men reported they had to their
partners," said lead researcher Hasse Walum, of the department of medical
epidemiology and biostatistics at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
"Men carrying this variant scored on average lower on a scale measuring the
strength of the bond compared to men not carrying this variant."

Women married to men carrying the "poorer bonding" form of the gene also
reported "lower scores on levels of marital quality than women married to
men not carrying this variant," Walum noted.

His team published its findings in this week's issue of the Proceedings of
the National Academies of Science.

Walum's team first got interested in the role of vasopressin and bonding
among males when studying a rodent, the vole. "Studies in voles have shown
that the hormone vasopressin is released in the brain of males during
mating," Walum explained.

Vasopressin activates the brain's reward system, and "you could say that
mating-induced vasopressin release motivates male voles to interact with
females they have mated with," Walum said. "This is not a sexual motivation,
but rather a sort of prolonged social motivation." In other words, the more
vasopressin in the brain, the more male voles want to stick around and
mingle with the female after copulation is through. This effect "is more
pronounced in the monogamous voles," Walum noted.

But voles and humans are very different species, so would the same effect
hold true for men?

To find out, the Swedish team zeroed in the vasopressin 1a gene, which is
shared by both species. Variations in this gene strongly influence
vasopressin activity in the male vole, so Walum wondered if it might do the
same for men.

To find out, his team looked for variants of the vasopressin 1a gene among
552 pairs of male twins enrolled in Sweden's ongoing Twin and Offspring
Study. All of the men were currently in a relationship that had lasted at
least five years, although about 18 percent of the men remained unmarried.
The men were subjected to psychological tests assessing their ability to
bond and commit, and the researchers also interviewed the men's spouses when
possible.

They found that men with a certain variant, known as an allele, of the
vasopressin 1a gene, called 334, tended to score especially low on a
standard psychological test called the Partner Bonding Scale. They were also
less likely to be married than men carrying another form of the gene. And
carrying two copies of the 334 allele doubled the odds that the men had
undergone some sort of marital crisis (for example, the threat of divorce)
over the past year.

All of these findings "make sense," said Dr. John Lucas, a clinical
associate professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College in New
York City. He said it's well known that genes help drive much of human
behavior, including mate bonding.

But the vasopressin 1a gene is likely not the only factor influencing a
man's ability to form true and lasting bonds, he added.

"It's unlikely to be a single gene [at work] -- it's likely to be multiple
genes that are expressed incompletely and interact with the environment,"
said Lucas, who is also a psychiatrist at New York Presbyterian
Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. He pointed out that what
psychologists call "temperament" -- the individual palette of emotions and
behaviors that even babies display -- is probably "hard-wired" by our
genetics. "But temperament, through training and experience, becomes
personality," Lucas said. "And personality is a complicated situation, of
course, and it involves the ability to commit."

So, it's too early for men to blame their inability to commit on a single
gene, although Lucas guesses it's an excuse that's "certainly going to be
used."

For his part, Walum agreed that men and their spouses shouldn't read too
much into the finding.

"Taken together, the effect of the gene variant that we have studied on
human pair-bonding behavior is rather small, and it can not, with any real
accuracy, be used to predict how someone will behave in a future
relationship," he said.

Walum also noted that the finding would probably not be applicable to women,
since vasopressin appears to be tied to social bonding in males, but not
females.

In a related study, also in the same issue of the journal, researchers at
the Pacific Health Research Institute in Honolulu said they've identified a
gene strongly linked to extended health and life span in humans. The FOXO3A
gene, involved in insulin signaling, is just the second gene ever found that
is closely tied to longevity, the researchers said. In their study of
Japanese-American men, those who lived to an average age of 98 had a
specific variant of FOXO3A compared to men who died at younger ages, the
team said.

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