Latent genetic studies conducted in multiple samples have produced a number of findings that begin to add to our understanding of the genetic architecture of conduct disorder. In what follows, we trace efforts to identify the specific genes associated with conduct disorder. Conduct disorder is a complex trait, meaning that many genes and genetic variants contribute to the phenotype. We group these efforts into approaches that are largely hypothesis free (e.g., linkage and high-throughput association analyses) and those that are more hypothesis driven (e.g., candidate gene approaches). Although we provide a historical overview of many of the methods used to identify genes associated with conduct disorder, we put a particular emphasis on approaches that are consistent with the current state of the science for identifying genetic variants for complex traits.
