The first aim of this project was to advance gene discovery by building models for gene identification that incorporate developmental changes in genetic influences on alcohol use across three developmental periods (adolescence, age 12-17; early adulthood, age 18-25; adulthood age 26+). To achieve this, we began by conducting a common factor GWAS of alcohol use frequency at different developmental stages using a meta-analytic approach in Genomic SEM (Grotzinger et al. 2019). The hypothesis for this analysis was that the meta-analyzed GWAS results would yield unique associations at different developmental stages. A diagram of the genomic structural equation model is depicted in Figure 1. To support the interpretation of this analysis, genetic correlations were calculated between the components of the genomic structural equation model and a series of other phenotypes using publicly available GWAS summary statistics.
