FASD supports these findings, showing that craniofacial phenotypes seen in FASD are linked to the PDGFRA gene (McCarthy et al. 2013). A more recent study in zebrafish found that a gene involved in the development of the embryonic axis, vangl2, interacts strongly with alcohol (Swartz et al. 2014). This finding provides another potential gene target to help identify significant sources of variance in terms of susceptibility to the facial characteristics and perhaps changes in brain seen in FASD (see McCarthy and Eberhart 2014 for a recent review of genetic factors involved in FASD).
