A variety of factors influence the risk for alcohol use disorder, which is heterogeneous and polygenic (Gelernter and Kranzler 2009). Alcohol research may benefit from in vitro human neural cell model systems that capture an individual’s genetic complexity to elucidate alcohol’s actions on neural cells and examine how these actions may differ in at-risk individuals. Here, we utilized iPSCs derived neural cultures from non-alcoholic CTLs and individuals diagnosed with alcohol dependence. Using an established neural differentiation protocol (Zeng et al. 2010), we examined GABAA receptor gene expression and electrophysiological function following alcohol exposure in differentiated human neural cultures enriched for forebrain-type neurons.
