Exploring Population Concepts in Multiethnic Gene-Environment Interaction Studies

描述（由申请人提供）：拟议的项目探讨了研究人员如何在新的和不断增长的竞技场的基因-环境相互作用（GxE）研究操作的概念，“一个人类群体。“拟议的项目将增加关于传统流行病学家和遗传流行病学家如何利用不同类型的数据共同努力使群体在疾病的生物医学研究中运作的关键信息。我们的研究的这一阶段将调查研究人员在以下过程中面临的挑战和复杂性：a）当环境变量被整合到遗传学研究中时的人群设计，以及B）当研究中心沿着遗传学或环境暴露的“相似性”汇集样本时。该项目将审查GxE研究产生的分析和结果的社会和道德层面。这一点尤其重要，因为这些GxE研究旨在将遗传数据与可能与种族和民族等社会文化类别（包括饮食和生活方式）有关的环境变量相结合。将要研究的GxE研究地点拥有来自大约70，000名种族和民族背景的人的环境暴露纵向信息，最近还增加了DNA和组织材料。GxE变量、不同人群和大规模队列的组合使其储存库成为美国最理想的GxE研究样本之一。拟议的研究方法主要涉及在这些实验室的工作过程中，与科学家的访谈和文献分析的人种学观察。该项目将提供更广泛的经验信息基础，使科学界、生物伦理学家和决策者能够了解在生物医学中使用不同框架对人群进行分组和界定人群的潜在影响。它的研究结果将有助于科学家在未来的研究中认识和考虑他们对人口概念的使用。 公共卫生相关性：本项目将探讨人类遗传流行病学研究中基因-环境相互作用研究中人口概念的概念化和操作化。该项目将分析研究人员在将基因组数据与环境因素信息进行比较以了解基因-环境相互作用时所面临的实践和问题。面临的一些挑战涉及分析使用不同类别收集的汇总数据。拟议项目的目的是提供有关生物医学中人口的不同用途和概念的信息和分析，这将有助于提高不同个人和群体的公共卫生相关基因-环境相互作用研究的可靠性和相关性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed project explores how researchers in the new and growing arena of gene- environment interaction (GxE) research operationalize the concept of "a human population." The proposed project will add critical information about how traditional epidemiologists and genetic epidemiologists, using different kinds of data, work together to operationalize groups in their biomedical studies of disease. This phase of our research will investigate the challenges and complexities faced by researchers during a) the design of populations when environmental variables are integrated into genetics studies, and b) when research centers pool samples along "similarities" in genetics or environmental exposures. The project will examine the social and ethical dimensions of analyses and results generated by GxE research. This is particularly important as these GxE studies aim to integrate genetic data with environmental variables that may be connected to socio-cultural categories like race and ethnicity, including diet and lifestyle. The GxE research sites to be studied have longitudinal information on environmental exposures from about 70,000 individuals of mostly under-represented racial and ethnic backgrounds, and have recently added DNA and tissue materials. This combination of GxE variables, diverse populations, and the large size of the cohort makes their repository one of the most desirable in the US for samples for GxE studies. The research methodology for the proposed study involves primarily ethnographic observation of work processes in these laboratories, interviews with scientists, and documentary analyses. This project will provide a broader base of empirical information from which the scientific community, bioethicists and policy makers can understand the potential impact of using different frameworks for grouping people and defining populations in biomedicine. Its findings will be useful to scientists in efforts to recognize and deliberate about their usage of concepts of population in future studies. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: The proposed project will investigate the conceptualization and operationalization of concepts of population in studies of gene-environment interactions in human genetic epidemiology research. The project will analyze the practices and problems faced by researchers as they work to compare genomic data with information on environmental factors to understand gene-environment interactions. Some of the challenges faced involve analyzing pooled data collected using different categories. The aim of the proposed project is to provide information and analyses about different uses and notions of population in biomedicine, which will be useful for improving the reliability and relevance of public health-related gene-environment interaction studies for different individuals and groups.