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Monozygotic twin differences in school performance are stable and systematic.

ABSTRACT: School performance is one of the most stable and heritable psychological characteristics. Notwithstanding, monozygotic twins (MZ), who have identical genotypes, differ in school performance. These MZ differences result from non-shared environments that do not contribute to the similarity within twin pairs. Because to date few non-shared environmental factors have been reliably associated with MZ differences in school performance, they are thought to be idiosyncratic and due to chance, suggesting that the effect of non-shared environments on MZ differences are age- and trait-specific. In a sample of 2768 MZ twin pairs, we found first that MZ differences in school performance were moderately stable from age 12 through 16, with differences at the ages 12 and 14 accounting for 20% of the variance in MZ differences at age 16. Second, MZ differences in school performance correlated positively with MZ differences across 16 learning-related variables, including measures of intelligence, personality and school attitudes, with the twin who scored higher on one also scoring higher on the other measures. Finally, MZ differences in the 16 learning-related variables accounted for 22% of the variance in MZ differences in school performance at age 16. These findings suggest that, unlike for other psychological domains, non-shared environmental factors affect school performance in systematic ways that have long-term and generalist influence. Our findings should motivate the search for non-shared environmental factors responsible for the stable and systematic effects on children's differences in school performance. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/0bw2Fl_HGq0.

SUBMITTER: von Stumm S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6202166 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Monozygotic twin differences in school performance are stable and systematic.

von Stumm Sophie S Plomin Robert R

Developmental science 20180619 6

School performance is one of the most stable and heritable psychological characteristics. Notwithstanding, monozygotic twins (MZ), who have identical genotypes, differ in school performance. These MZ differences result from non-shared environments that do not contribute to the similarity within twin pairs. Because to date few non-shared environmental factors have been reliably associated with MZ differences in school performance, they are thought to be idiosyncratic and due to chance, suggesting ...[more]

PMID: 29920866

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Project description:The expression level for 15 887 transcripts in lymphoblastoid cell lines from 19 monozygotic twin pairs (10 male, 9 female) were analysed for the effects of genotype and sex. On an average, the effect of twin pairs explained 31% of the variance in normalized gene expression levels, consistent with previous broad sense heritability estimates. The effect of sex on gene expression levels was most noticeable on the X chromosome, which contained 15 of the 20 significantly differentially expressed genes. A high concordance was observed between the sex difference test statistics and surveys of genes escaping X chromosome inactivation. Notably, several autosomal genes showed significant differences in gene expression between the sexes despite much of the cellular environment differences being effectively removed in the cell lines. A publicly available gene expression data set from the CEPH families was used to validate the results. The heritability of gene expression levels as estimated from the two data sets showed a highly significant positive correlation, particularly when both estimates were close to one and thus had the smallest standard error. There was a large concordance between the genes significantly differentially expressed between the sexes in the two data sets. Analysis of the variability of probe binding intensities within a probe set indicated that results are robust to the possible presence of polymorphisms in the target sequences. Keywords: Monozygotic twin pair Expression Profiles Genome-wide gene expression in lymphoblastoid cell lines was determined using microarrays derived from 15 monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs (10 male, 9 female). 10 twin pair are discordant, 4 are concordant for a disease phenotype and their are 5 controls which have no disease phenotype. This data set was analyzed to interrupt replicated effects of sex and genotype, not disease characteristics. Subsets of these samples have been analyzed separately for disease characteristics, (GSE7036 M-bM-^@M-^S 3 MZ twins discordant for bipolar disorder) and (GSE7486 - 5 discordant and 4 concordant MZ twin pairs with idiopathic absence epilepsies and 5 unaffected MZ twin pairs).

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Monozygotic twin differences in school performance are stable and systematic.

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Monozygotic twin differences in school performance are stable and systematic.

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