As part of an international consortium known as “The Nicotine Addiction Genetics (NAG) Project”, investigators from Australia, Finland and the United States are using population-based samples selected to be informative for smoking outcomes to identify genes harboring risk loci for heavy cigarette smoking and nicotine dependence, and contributing to risk of becoming a long-term nicotine dependent cigarette smoker (Saccone et al., 2007a). Towards this goal, we conducted genome scans using data from 450 Australian and Finnish families. Our aim in this paper is to present our findings for DSM-IV nicotine withdrawal, which prior research suggests is an important component of nicotine dependence.
